


Close to Me

by joannereads



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Blood and Torture, Case Fic, Consensual Underage Sex, HEA eventually, Heartbreak, M/M, Minor Character Death, Some hurt/comfort, Sort of case fic, Threats of Violence, Torture, but definitely HEA, difficult emotional discussions, honestly not a lot of fun to be had in some places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 23
Words: 63,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23809654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joannereads/pseuds/joannereads
Summary: Danny Williams is 17.Steve McGarrett is 26.They all live in Hawaii.And their lives are about to get really, really messy.Because Steve? Steve's his brother's best friend.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 254
Kudos: 254





	1. The End

**Author's Note:**

> I have a pretty good idea where this is going to go, and it will have a happy ending, though I don't quite know how we're going to get there yet. It's AU, and the characters might be slightly OOC, but I've tried not to give too much away in the summary so if you have questions before you start to read then I'm happy to answer them.  
> I expect there will be some explicit content, but I've not tagged as this. I will warn when it's coming for people who aren't into that sort of thing, and it won't dominate the story as it so often has in my fics.  
> I don't know how often I will post, or how long this will be, I just hope I can finish it.  
> Stay safe.

“I know you feel it too,” Danny whispers, his voice a warm breath on the back of Steve’s neck. 

Steve suppresses a shiver. He doesn’t reply.  
Inside a war wages within him and he knows he’s dangerously close to losing the battle.

“Why won’t you just say it?” Danny asks, desperation colouring the demand this time. He is so close that Steve can feel him, his heat, his energy. 

Again, Steve remains silent. 

It is the hardest thing he has ever had to do, which is really saying something.


	2. Return

“Did you hear?” Danny’s mom asks him over the newspaper she is half reading. He looks at her for a moment and waits for the follow up as he grabs a piece of toast from the plate she has discarded. “Steve’s back in town. I ran into him and his sister at the grocery store yesterday afternoon.”  
Danny’s heart sinks into his gut like a rock. His mom watches for a reaction, his reaction, any reaction in fact. She knows him too well. Instead, he struggles internally to keep his breaths normal and his face relaxed. Inside, his emotions churn and vibrate uncomfortably.  
“That’s great,” he says shortly, the words sticking to his tongue, “It’s been a while.”  
“The funeral,” his mom says quietly, glancing at the soldier’s picture on the wall below the clock.  
“The funeral,” Danny agrees. It's her turn to be overwhelmed by emotions. He gives her time to compose herself again. It’s been almost three years, but she still cries every time it’s mentioned. By now, the whole thing is less of an elephant in the room, and more of a giant inescapable rock that everyone squeezes around as they try to ‘move on’, and ‘get past it’, figure out this ‘new life’. If Danny is truly honest with himself, it's exhausting, and the memories in the house are heavy weights around each of their necks. And hearts. Only a year and he can finally get out of here on his own. He loves his family, but ever since . . . well, things haven't been the same. His mom stands up and comes around the kitchen counter to stand in front of him. She's at his eye-line, hers the same brilliant blue as his own, her hair the same barely-tamed blonde as his also. He's his mother's son in so many ways.  
“Are you going to be okay?” she asks, cupping his check in her hand and staring right into his eyes. She knows it makes him uncomfortable, this closeness, but she says they can’t hide their feelings from each other.  
“I’ll be fine. It’ll be good to see him again." A lie. A big, fat lie that's going to stick in his throat a while. He's told it for his mom though, and it appeases her. She steps back a little and his breath comes back in a rush. "Why’s he here?” he asks suddenly.  
“Teaching now, apparently.”  
“Wow. That’s . . . great. At my school?” Now Danny is struggling to stay composed. He discards the half chewed piece of toast and coughs drily. There is no way that he will be able to see Steve every single day. His heart is racing, his palms sweating, as his mom starts to nod.  
“Not sure what, though. I don't think he said. Best get going; you’ll be late.” She smiles and he forces the same in return. His throat is still dry and his mind is spiralling as he grabs his things and heads out of the door.

Danny walks to school like he does every day. It's not too far, the neighbourhood seemingly built around an arbitrarily located high school. He can't see the ocean during the walk-they're a little too far in land-but on quiet days he can hear it. Today, though, it feels like he’s trudging through tar or treacle or something, and the blood is rushing in his ears, and the sun hot on his skin, and everything is too tight and uncomfortable and oppressive. Since Matt . . . everything has been different. And now? Now he’s going to have to see Steve every day. Fuck.

“Hey! Danny!” He’s so locked in his own world that he doesn’t register his name being called until it’s practically yelled in his ear. “Danny? Hey! I’ve been calling you for like forever. What’s going on?”  
Grace tilts her head slightly, like she’s trying to psychoanalyse him or something, and he punches her in the shoulder (lightly – he’s not stupid, she’d break his hand if he ever hurt her) and shrugs. “One of those days, I guess.” He knows his shoulders are slumped, and he feels pale. Does he look pale? God, this is going to be the longest day in history.  
Grace hugs him softly, petting his hair, and then steps back and gives him space. He loves how she knows him so well. When she smiles it lights up her whole being and he can’t not smile back. “You sure, Danny? I have two whole ears and they are totally here to listen, dude.” Another smile and a pause. Danny shakes his head and she nods decisively. She knows he will when he’s ready, and he knows it too. She loops her arm through his and begins to haul his ass to class.  
“You know, that skirt is leaving absolutely zero to the imagination,” Danny starts, and she nudges him playfully. It’s a hot pink and black tartan that is more belt than skirt, and the strappy half-tee she’s wearing covers little else. Sometimes it’s best to just pick one fashion fault a day, Danny thinks, rather than the whole outfit.  
“Sweet, isn’t it?” Grace laughs. “If this doesn’t get Will’s attention I have no idea what will!” She snickers a little at what she thinks is a joke and Danny rolls his eyes.  
“Grace-face, we have been best friends since we were, what? Four? And I feel I should tell you this as that friend. Trying to snag the principal’s son with an outfit most likely to be found on a hooker is possibly not the best course of action. Not like he can take you home to dinner. If you bend over, everyone around is going to get way more than they bargained for and he is not going to want that for his parents, is he?” He waits a moment and sees her mulling over his opinions. It won’t matter, she loves him to bits but he knows she won’t listen if she doesn’t want to.  
“I can play prim princess if necessary. Right now, I’m hooking the fish, then we’ll sweeten the family.”  
It doesn’t even make sense, but Danny leaves it alone for today. His mind keeps circling back to Matt and Steve and the mess that is his life. Grace drags him in to English and they slide into their seats. They were lucky to get this class together. He’s no slouch, but Grace is a whizz-kid and they’ve rarely had class together since starting junior high. He worked hard for this though, loves English, and thinks that maybe it’s because reading a good book is about the only time he ever escapes the memories. He stops himself before he becomes any more maudlin. He desperately wants a do-over for today. He is sick of the nausea in the pit of his stomach. The idea that Steve could be loitering around any corner is disconcerting and he finds it hard enough to be balanced at the best of times. He grabs books and a pen from his bag and tries to focus on Grace's conversation with another kid. It's not really working.

Mrs Wanaker strolls in just before the bell and writes up the pages of their novel on the board. Danny flips open the text, grabs a highlighter and waits. Grace is already staring intently, focused completely on the learning in this weird ‘zone’ thing she has going on. Danny fights desperately to follow what’s going on, but his mind is still determined to torture him, and by the end of period bell he has zero notes and a headache pushing at the base of his skull. He rubs his eyes and sighs wearily, before starting to shove things back in his bag.  
“Danny?” It’s Mrs Wanaker. She’s looking at him the way all his teachers do when he’s having an off day. Like he’s the 'charity case'. The special kid with ‘history’ and ‘pain’ who needs to be protected from the world. “You don’t seem like yourself today. Are you feeling okay?” No. Damn it all to hell, but he is absolutely not okay. He wants to break down, confess everything that's eating him, but if he does that he will only confirm his charity case status once and for all. He just wants to be like everyone else. Well, mostly that's what he wants.  
“Just a headache,” he says through a wan smile because she is still watching him closely. She must be in her early fifties, and she has that motherly air about her that make her a favourite among the student body. Again, the urge to fall apart lingers just beneath his skin but he lets it simmer, unheeded. “I’m sure it’ll improve.”  
“Well you go straight to the school nurse if it doesn’t, you hear me?” she says, the admonishment in her tone light and non-threatening and the smile reassuring and kind. He nods and grabs his bag before looking around. Grace has already gone: her next class is poorly timetabled all the way across the campus, and the next class doesn't seem to have arrived yet. He sees an opportunity and decides that, for once, he’s going to play the cards he was dealt.  
“Actually, Mrs Wanaker, could I ask you a question?”  
She turns and gestures him over to her desk. The next class does start to drift in but they are congregated at the back, talking amongst themselves, and it's not enough to put him off. Even the kids seem to know when and how to give Danny space.  
“What is it?” she asks.  
“I heard there’s a new teacher starting on campus?” It definitely comes out as a question, though he doesn’t mean it to.  
“Ah, yes. I expect you’ll be looking forward to it,” she says, totally misreading the tone of the question or the pain in Danny’s voice. “Mr McGarrett is joining the faculty next week.”  
Danny swallows past the enormous lump in his rapidly constricting throat. “So, it is true,” he manages, faking a smile.  
“Oh yes dear. He’s coming in as Assistant Coach of the football team, so you’ll get to see plenty of him at practice. He'll be picking up some classes as well." She waits and he says nothing. His brain is screaming, but his mouth and body are unresponsive. "You’d best run along, or you’re going to be tardy,” she continues, and he walks away on autopilot.  
Danny doesn’t really see or hear much of anything for the rest of the morning. He knows that he’s in class, because he keeps packing his bag and then unpacking it, but he learns absolutely nothing.

At lunch, he chews on a carrot stick and tries really hard to listen to Grace’s story about her grandma and the beach, but he just can’t manage. The carrot is hard and tasteless and he has to force himself to swallow before tossing the rest onto his tray.  
“Steve’s working here, from next week,” he blurts out. Grace stops mid word and stares at him intensely for what feels like hours.  
“Here?” Her voice is a little high pitched. It's pretty hard to shock her, but Danny seems to have achieved it.  
“Yup.”  
“And you are, of course, totally freaking out.”  
“I am.”  
He sits and silently chews his fries which are only slightly less tasteless than the carrot stick. Grace sits and silently chews hers too. "What can I do?" she finally adds.  
"Fuck if I know."

Danny sits down to dinner with the family. They are loud and annoying and he loves it because, even with Matt’s empty chair, they are still family and they didn’t let everything that happened tear them apart. Not like he’s seen with other families where one kid gets killed. His mom puts a huge serving of carbonara into his pasta dish, and his stomach growls at the sight. He's barely eaten all day, and has only just started to feel like eating anything. He picks up his fork and begins to dig in when there’s knock at the front door. “Go get that, will you Danny?" his mom asks, "It’ll be Steve.”  
Danny feels the blood drain from his face and he drops his fork, splattering creamy sauce across the tablecloth and up Bridget’s arm.  
“Ew, gross! You ass, Daniel Williams!” Bridget always double-names him when she's pissed. Danny can't hear it though. He can't move.  
“Danny? Door?”  
“You invited Steve for dinner?” his father asks, like he’s just getting into the conversation.  
“I thought it’d be good to see him, you know, since it’s been a while. I know he’s still just as broken up about everything as we are. Plus, I know Danny will want to catch up. They used to spend so much time together when Steve and Matty were kids." It's like she suddenly realises he hasn't moved and she glares at him. "Door, Daniel!”  
Their dinner guest knocks again and Danny pushes out from the table. His feet walk him to the entryway, but the rest of him is screaming to do anything but. He turns the knob and pulls open the door and he suddenly feels sick to his stomach.  
“Hey, Danno, buddy. You’re looking great.”  
Steve McGarrett, all six feet and an inch of him, has the audacity to smile. Danny takes in the sight of him: tattoos twist out from beneath the sleeves of his smart polo shirt that weren't there the last time he saw him, those damned cargo pants that haunt Danny’s sleep still clad his legs, heavy boots that are no good at all for playing football and just seem to stir the anger in Danny's belly, and that smile. How fucking dare he?  
Danny lifts his fist and, before he realises what he’s doing, he throws a punch which slams into Steve Fucking McGarrett’s stupid face and sends him reeling backwards. Then he turns on his heel, and storms up to his room—his and Matt’s room damn it—while the chaos unfolds downstairs.


	3. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry - I know the chapters aren't too long. But I'm enjoying the process of writing a bite-sized story. Please let me know your thoughts, they feed a poor, starving writer's soul (and her ego!)

Danny sits on his bed and stares out the window. He sees ocean, just barely there in the distant horizon, and palm trees and the setting sun in darkening blue skies. He doesn’t take it in. His fist hurts like a bitch, but he won’t go downstairs for ice—or the inevitable lecture—until he’s sure that Steve is long gone. He also thinks about calling Grace but he’s not sure he has the words to tell her what’s happened yet. Mostly because he's not even sure. It just happened. At least, that's what he keeps telling himself. The anger that he's harboured for the last three years just came out all at once and, if he's being honest with himself (which he might as well seeing as there's only him here), it felt really good. Steve has been a lingering memory for so long, and Danny's been pissed at him for so long, that he feels relieved that he got to punch the smug bastard in the face. He's smiling? He's happy? How the fuck is he happy when Matt is dead? He continues to watch the sun set out of his window. He hears the murmurs of conversation downstairs, the atmosphere dulled because of him. He's sorry he's upset the family but he's not sorry he hit Steve. Better here than at school, he reasons.

It’s dark when there’s a soft knock at the door. Mom finally come to check up on him? Dad coming to talk to him about how to treat guests? Bridget to lecture him about upsetting Mom and Dad? The list is endless, really.  
“Can I come in?”  
Fucking Steve.  
“If you want a matching black eye, go right ahead,” Danny snarls. The anger still simmers, though he's more tired now than he's been in a long time, and he just wants to wallow. Steve still has the audacity to open the door and step in, though he doesn't close it. He shuffles in and stands in front of the window, eyes casting out over the darkened landscape, hands tucked in his pockets. After a just a few seconds, Steve turns and stares at him.  
“You got a lucky shot in. You won’t get another,” Steve says. He’s serious, and Danny knows he won’t get a chance like that again. Maybe that’s why his subconscious took the opportunity that was presented despite him knowing the consequences. “What was that for, Danny? I’ve not seen you in three years and the first thing you do is punch me in the face?” Steve turns to look at him. The left side of his face is bruised, though not too badly, and Danny is relieved and disappointed in the same heartbeat. Steve's eyes are so very sad. He isn't angry. He doesn't think this is funny. He's just sad. Danny's anger is fuelled again. How dare Steve be angry when it's Danny's brother that died?  
“You really don’t get it, do you?” Danny’s voice is rising. He doesn’t yell, not really, but his emotions are feeding off the anger that has simmered within him since the day that soldier marched up to their door step and told them Matt was never coming back again.  
“I want to,” Steve says softly. He sits down in Danny's desk chair, a respectful distance from Danny himself. Danny just glares. “I don't know why that happened tonight, but I want to know. I miss your family. Being here with him, with all of you? Those were some of the best times of my life. I miss him too. Matt was my best—”  
“Don’t you say his name! You don’t get to do that. He wasn’t your family. We aren't your family!”  
“Yes he was, Danny, and he saved my ass more times than I can count.” Steve's voice breaks and for the first time Danny sees that maybe Steve is not how he thought he would be. He sees that maybe, just maybe, Matt's death was just as hard for him as it was for Danny himself.  
“So why the fuck didn’t you save his ass?” Tears spring into Danny’s eyes as he lets rip with the question he has always wanted to ask. Why didn't Steve save him?  
“That’s what this is? You blame me.”  
“You were in charge, weren’t you? Leave no man behind and all that shit.”  
Steve visibly slumps in the chair, his face ashen and eyes down. Danny follows his gaze and sees Steve staring at his own hands, the fingers trembling a little as he flexes them, one finger after the other.  
“What are you doing?” he asks, "With your hands. What is that?"  
“Nothing, Danny. Just . . . I didn’t realise that you felt . . . Fuck.” The curse is whispered, more a breath than a word. Steve looks up and straight into Danny’s pained, blue eyes.  
“I can’t tell you what happened, you know that. But I did everything I could, more really. I wanted to bring him home to you all. You especially. You’re his baby brother. He talked about you all the time. You say I’m not family, but spending leave with you all those times, the Skype calls, the stories he’d tell. I felt like I belonged here more than I ever did at home. You were just a kid.”  
“I was not a kid," Danny grumbles. "I was fourteen. I was here when they came to tell us, did you know that?” Steve shakes his head. Danny, tired now, slumps onto his bed. The duvet and covers are rumpled and Danny is suddenly embarrassed about the state of the space. It was always militarily tidy when he shared it with Matt. What must Steve think of the mess? Of everything? His mind flashes back to memories of Steve crashing on their floor for a few weeks of leave. The thoughts are gone as quickly as they came though, and he instead remembers that day. The memories are vivid, technicolour, too bright for his brain. “Mom collapsed, like the ground shifted and it wasn’t beneath her anymore. She cried. It was guttural, you know? A piece of her was torn right out her chest.” Steve nods again, like he knows the kind of pain. “I tried to get her back inside before the neighbours all saw, but she couldn’t get back up on her feet. I've never felt so . . . helpless.” Fuck. He must seem stupid. "Pathetic, I know. I couldn't be the man she needed. Instead I just let her suffer."  
“I’m sorry you had to do that, but it's not pathetic. You were fourteen, Danny.” Steve’s head is in his hands and he’s staring at the faded grey carpet. “Fourteen. I am so sorry. I tried. I really did. We were surrounded and there was no way out and then he just . . .” Steve stops talking—he’s already said way too much—but Danny sees the agony in the tightness of his eyes and the clenched fists.  
All this time Danny's held this grudge, this blame, and it’s eaten away at him. Steve’s fault, Steve’s fault, Steve’s fault. It was his mantra, his survival story, but it seems wrong now. But without a target for the anger and the frustration, he isn't sure how to be anymore. He needs some time. Some space to think. He pushes his fingers through his hair, dragging the errant blonde strands backwards into some semblance of tidy, and takes a couple of breaths.  
“Why’d you quit?” Danny asks quietly. Steve's found a way to try and move on with his life, maybe Danny will too. Eventually.  
“I couldn’t do it anymore, Danny. Everything reminded me of him, of them, and I wasn’t . . . Look. It doesn’t really matter, okay? I wanted to be home again, pay something back. I wanted to come up here tonight, to make things right with you because he would want me to. And because I wanted to. We always had fun together, the three of us, and maybe I was looking for some of that back. When your mom invited me for dinner, I thought I was maybe going to feel at home again. It wasn’t quite the homecoming I was expecting.” He touches his cheek gingerly and smiles wryly.  
“Yeah. Sorry about that,” Danny says. He leans forward and looks more closely at Steve’s face when Steve’s eyes catch his. For a fleeting moment, Danny loses himself in them and something stirs in his belly. Something he hasn’t felt for a really long time.

Something he hasn’t felt since he was fourteen years old and was watching Steve sleep on his bedroom floor.

Fuck.

“You did what?” Grace exclaims the following day, hand over her mouth.  
“Punched him. Not my finest hour.” Danny's been torn up over it all night, and he slept dreadfully because of it. In the end, he gave up and found himself watching hours of infomercials before his alarm went off. His mom had looked at him worryingly, but whatever Steve said when he left last night had meant no-one had tried to discuss the punch. He was grateful for that, because he had no idea what to say to them.  
“All this time, Danny. All this time you’ve told me it was his fault.” Grace looks at him with enormous brown eyes, confusion written over her features. She is dressed today, in that her clothes cover almost all of the vital body parts. The outfit is bright orange though, so she was easy to pick out in the crowd this morning.  
“I know. I guess I needed someone to blame. But last night? He told me he did everything he could and I believe him.”  
“You believe him? Just like that?”  
“He said some things, stuff he probably shouldn’t have, so yeah. I believe him.”  
“Okay then.”  
That’s what Danny loves about Grace. She trusts him, takes him at his word. Honestly, he’s relieved he doesn’t have to go into any more depth. Sure, he wants the whole story about how Steve got his entire team out of whatever hellish position they were in, but never managed to get Matt out. But he won’t get it, because it’s classified, and he has to live with that just as Steve does.  
“Is he still hot?” Grace asks, leering at him over the pile of books in her hands. She’s teasing. He’s going to kill her. Later though. Not today.  
“No. He’s just Steve. He was never hot.”  
Grace raises an eyebrow and waits, lips pursed in that way she has that says, ‘I know everything there is to know about you, including which side you hang on, and I’m not afraid to use it.’ God, he hates it sometimes.  
“Yeah, okay, sure. He’s still attractive. Doesn’t matter though, does it?” Danny doesn't want to have this conversation. Steve will always be Matt's best friend. Always. No-one is ever going to see him as anything else to the family, least of all as Danny's significant other. So, these thoughts need to be put to bed now, so that he can keep moving every day. There's nothing more crippling than unrequited love. Love? Fuck.  
“You can look," Grace says with a shrug.  
“Yes. At practice when he’s coaching my team. In class if I get stuck in his history class. And, apparently, over my dinner table when he comes to see the family. I’m like, his younger brother or something.”  
“Okay,” Grace shrugs, “Enjoy the view, is what I say. And, if it gives you a few nice thoughts when you’re feeling—” She coughs indiscreetly. “Well, that’s all good too!” She skips away to class, laughing as she goes.  
He really might kill her, if she doesn’t kill him first.


	4. Family

Steve turns the key in the lock and steps in to the little townhouse. Dinner with the Williams' last night, dinner with Mary tonight. Hopefully, tonight's will be less intense.  
“Hey, Mary?” he calls, shrugging off his coat and hooking it up behind the door.  
“We’re up here!” his sister calls, the sound echoing to indicate the bathroom. Smiling, Steve bounds up the staircase, two at a time, and finds his sister and eighteen month old niece, Joan, in the bathroom. Mary’s tee shirt is soaked through, and Joan is splashing around delightedly in the bubbles. Steve grins at Joan over Mary’s shoulder. He never imagined that his sister would be a mom, mostly because she had always been flighty and irresponsible, but she was amazing with Joan and Steve was a little jealous of the life she had now.  
“Hey, kiddo. You having fun, there?” he asks. Joan squeals again, splashing more water in the air and getting bubbles in Mary’s hair.  
“So, how was dinner with the Williams’ yesterday?” Mary asks. Steve huffs out a sigh.  
“It was . . . interesting.”  
“What does that mean?” Mary says, turning. “Oh my god! What happened to your face?” she gasps.  
“Danny.” Steve turns to wash his hands and to give Mary a minute to think before she speaks. It's a good practice he's learnt over time, because she is well known for her foot-in-mouth syndrome. He turns back and sits on the toilet lid to watch Joan in the water.  
“Danny?” Mary stares a little more, and then turns back to Joan herself, rinsing the little girl's hair carefully with a red plastic jug of water. Steve kids himself that Mary and Joan were the biggest reasons for coming home. He tells Mary the same, and she loves him for it, but it’s still a lie.  
“Seems he blames me for Matt,” Steve says quietly. "Or at least did. I'm not sure now." Steve was not expecting the conversation with Danny to go the way it did. The whole walk over here he had replayed it in his mind. He said way too much about what happened. Danny was never going to say anything, but it wasn't good that he hadn't managed a single conversation about Matt without spilling his guts. Danny must think him really weak or stupid and, for some reason, that's been really bothering him all the way back. Mary looks at him once again, judging his mood, before turning round to scoop Joan out of the water.  
“I can see why he would think that,” she says, gently so as not to bruise her brother. “I mean, he was a kid when it all happened and he probably doesn’t understand it. Did you talk to him?” Mary is dressing Joan in the most adorable baby gro. Bright pink, covered in dark purple boats. Steve remembers sending it to them from somewhere in Europe. He spent hours trying to decide what size to send, having no idea at the time when he might see them and having zero knowledge about babies or how fast they grow. Freddie had helped in the end, having had a daughter of his own, and he had laughed at Steve for weeks after.  
“I talked, yes. He listened, mostly. I think I got through to him.”  
“Is he still nursing that crush on you?” Mary asks, a smile in her voice. She lifts Joan to her hip and the baby reaches for her uncle straight away. Steve takes Joan, while Mary begins to empty the tub and put the toys in the drainage net.  
“He never had a crush on me,” Steve replies, his eyes rolling.  
“Sure he did. The whole heart eyes, hanging off every word kinda crush. It was cute, really.”  
“Like you said, he was a kid. He’s seventeen now, in his final year of school. He’s probably got a significant other.” He doesn't say girlfriend because, like Mary clearly believes, he's pretty certain Danny is gay. It doesn't matter now and it never mattered then. He isn't even sure why he thinks it, but he always has.  
“Sure,” Mary laughs, then takes Joan and carries her through to her room and Steve follows. He loves to watch Mary tell Joan stories, but if he’s really honest with himself, he loves to tell her stories himself more. “Come on then,” Mary says, patting the space next to her.

Steve slips out of Mary’s house around 10pm and heads home. He doesn’t like being there on his own and always puts off leaving Mary until the last possible moment. It’s too quiet and empty in his own home but he couldn’t stay with Mary forever and this house was just a few blocks away. Close if she needed him. Close if he needed her.

  
He leaves his jacket and boots in the entrance and heads into the kitchen. It’s only small, but it’s all he needs. He makes himself an instant coffee and slumps onto the sofa in the living room, clicking through the channels and settling on an old game.  
Nights like this are tough. He’s not tired, mentally anyway, but he’s full of feelings he doesn’t understand. There’s a picture of his team on the wall above the fireplace. Next to him, proud in his dress uniform, stands Matthew Williams. The rest of the team stands alongside them. They all look so proud in their dress blues, so ready for everything that was to come. They weren't at all. Steve’s brain starts to conjure up images of that day, that mission, and he needs to shut it down quick before all he hears is explosions and all he feels is dust.

  
He changes quickly: shorts, vest, running shoes. Pounding the asphalt might help shake the memories. He plugs in his ear phones to something loud with plenty of guitar and drums, and heads out. It’s late, and dark, and quiet. Just how he likes it. Steve runs and runs. He has a couple of routes, but tonight he diverts a little and drifts over towards the Williams’ house. Before tonight, he hadn't really thought about how both he and Mary had effectively settled in the Williams' neighbourhood. He doesn’t know what draws him there now though. Matt? His parents? Danny? He’s always liked Danny. He’s caustically funny, his smile is dazzling and Steve is slowly beginning to realise that maybe he sees ‘the kid’ very differently to how he used to.  
“Probably just because of Matt,” he thinks to himself, trying to shake a whole new set of uncomfortable and worrying thoughts.  
“Hey!” Suddenly there is another person alongside him, running in step. It’s almost midnight—this is supposed to be alone time. He turns and his breath catches in his throat for a second: Danny.  
“Hey,” he says, smiling softly. Danny smiles back. “What are you doing out here? It’s really late.”  
“Can’t sleep," Danny answers, a quick shrug. "Happens a lot to be honest. I like being out at this time of night. Quiet.”  
“Well, it was,” Steve says wryly.  
“I’ll push off. Leave you alone,” Danny says. Steve sees his shoulders have fallen a little and there’s a lurch in his chest that’s unwelcome and that he can't not act on.  
“Don’t be stupid. We’re only running.”  
“Okay then.”

And the two run, keeping pace with each other. By the time Steve is starting to feel ready to sleep, they’ve arrived back at Danny’s house. Neither of them seemed to lead the run, so he has no idea how they ended up back here, but here they are. Despite the silence they’ve run in, Steve has never felt more calm and settled as he has right now.  
“Night, then,” Danny says, turning to go in. Steve reaches out and catches his wrist. “Wait.”  
Danny turns back and glances at where Steve’s fingers are wrapped around his wrist. That’s an image Danny is filing away for later and he suppresses a shudder.  
“Thank you, for the company. But it’s not safe for you to be out here alone at night.”  
“Why?”  
“Because you’re a kid.”  
Danny snatches his wrist back in a huff and turns to stomp inside, searching for the key in his pockets.  
“And because I can’t bear the thought of anyone hurting you. Not after . . . after everything.” Steve's voice is distant and quiet.  
Danny turns back, his glare softening and his anger dissipating as quickly as it flared. “So, if you need to run off some steam late at night, will you promise to call me?” Steve continues, his hands stuffed in his pockets.  
“I don’t have your number, doofus,” Danny laughs, desperate to change the mood and the way Steve looks. Steve takes out his phone and Danny copies him, doing the same. They exchange numbers quietly. “Wait. If you’re going to be coaching and teaching at school, am I allowed your number?” Danny asks.  
“I think this is a little different. You’re the kid brother of my, now deceased, best friend. I think there’s probably a loophole somewhere.” Steve means it as a joke, at least he thinks he does, but it falls a little flat. There's a pause, a moment where each looks at the other, before Steve takes a step back and breaks the spell.  
“Okay then. Night.” Danny finally goes inside and Steve turns to walk the three blocks home.

Steve’s phone pings a little after one in the morning, just as he’s settling into bed.  
DANNO: Thank you, for caring if I’m safe.  
STEVE M: Not a problem.  
DANNO: See you tomorrow, maybe?  
STEVE M: Sure. Night.  
DANNO: Night


	5. Day to day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, before writing and posting this I redrafted the rest of the story. Nothing significant has changed, so you don't need to go back and read it all again. But I'm letting you know in case you want to. I tidied up some narrative glitches, fixed some grammatical errors and added more angst, pretty much.  
> Thanks to everyone who has shown love and dropped kudos for this story. It's been a long time since I was able to write, and I now have a renewed passion for it that I'm really enjoying again.  
> I don't think I'd realised how much of me I had lost over the last few years and now that I'm rediscovering myself I don't quite know what to feel.  
> Thanks for being on this journey with me again.

**DANNO** : Can't sleep. Run?  
 **STEVE M** : It's late.

Danny sighs and begins to fasten his sneakers. Yes. It's almost two in the morning. But after three hours of staring at his ceiling he can't take it anymore. The whole household is asleep, infomercials aren't working, and he just needs air. He wasn't honestly expecting a reply anyway, with it being so late. And tomorrow is Steve's first day. He really thought he'd be asleep but he did promise to check in so he felt he ought to. He makes his way through the house slowly. From the fridge he grabs a bottle of water, then hesitates and puts it back. He shuffles through his music app for his running playlist and then looks around for his key. Finally, he makes his way out of the house, taking care not to wake anyone.

When Danny steps outside, Steve is jogging up the street towards him and it snatches his breath away a little. He really didn't think that Steve would come. Why would he? He has nothing to prove, he doesn't have to protect Danny, and frankly he's probably got better things to do. Like sleeping.  
"Hey," Steve says.  
"I didn't think you'd come," Danny replies redundantly.  
"I said I would. Where are we headed?"  
Danny gestures down the street and Steve waits, falling in to step with Danny as they set off.  
"Nervous about your first day back to school?" Danny asks with a grin and Steve laughs a little.  
"Actually, yeah. It's my first proper teaching job."  
"When did you train?"  
"Last year. I resigned my commission and did my training in Nebraska."  
Danny lets that sink in for a minute. Steve leaves the navy, the navy he joined straight out of college after gaining a seemingly pointless history degree, and then went straight into teaching. But he didn't come home. They run in silence for a while, towards the ocean it seems. Danny runs and runs, one foot in front of the other, over and over, but he doesn't feel tired. He should, two hours sleep last night and none tonight, but it's weirdly exhilarating to run and it's pumping him up. Steve stays with him step for step. He put his ear buds in a couple of blocks before and he seems to have drifted away in his own thoughts just a little. It's soothing for Danny. He enjoys Steve's presence next to him; reassuring without being overbearing.

Another twenty minutes pass, and they arrive at the beach itself. Danny stops and breathes in huge lungfuls of sea air. Brine, warm sand and stars. For miles. Steve stops alongside him and pulls out his ear buds.  
"I missed this view," he says. "Nebraska doesn't look like this."  
Danny laughs. Steve rests his hands on the railing, bending over and taking a few deep breaths. Danny glances at Steve's ass, and takes another deep breath himself. Grace was right - it can't hurt to look. When he realises he's staring, he mimics the movement and leans on the railing himself.  
"Why were you in Nebraska?"  
Steve's answer takes far longer than Danny thought it would, and he begins to regret asking.  
"After Afghanistan, I needed some space. Everything happened really quickly. College to basic training to war to . . . well, losing Matt. I struggled to wrap my head around what had happened, you know? Of course you know. So, I was redeployed to a training facility, in Nebraska. I just ended up staying there because it was easier. But Mary had Joan and it felt like a good time to come back."  
Danny doesn't think that's the whole story but he leaves it for now, already having pried too much. Steve doesn't need to tell him anything. Danny wants to ask him about Matt, too, about what he was like while they were deployed, but he doesn't want to ruin the mood and cause them both to become maudlin. He changes the topic of conversation quickly.  
"So why the hell are you out with me at this time in the morning? Why aren't you sleeping like a normal person?"  
Steve turns to face Danny and cocks an eyebrow. "You weren't asleep either," Steve says. Danny shivers a little. God, that's a hot expression. Teasing smirk and bright eyes, and just enough give in the vest to reveal a scoop of chest. Danny swears he can see a tattoo on Steve's pectoral. He really wants to look further. Distraction. Before he can think about why, he starts to blurt out an answer to a question that wasn't even asked.  
"I don't sleep. Have you any idea how weird it is to sleep in the same room I grew up in without the brother I shared with for years? Sure we took out the bunk beds, yeah fine, but every time I close my eyes I remember him. The way we'd talk late at night, especially after I came out to the family because he was always my biggest supporter and biggest fan. But I also remember the first night in there after he died. It's a bit like living in a mortuary, I guess, and it's not fun so I really struggle to clear my head enough to sleep."  
Danny swallows, but holds Steve's gaze. He's never told anyone the real cause of his insomnia, mostly because he didn't want to upset them or hurt them or worry them, but also because it was easier to not admit it to himself. Plus, he wasn't sure Steve knew about him being gay. Surely Matt told him? Steve doesn't seem surprised, which is a bit of a relief.  
Steve stands and stretches, his vest rising enough to reveal ink on his lower back and curling around over his hips.  
"What's with all the tattoos?" he blurts. He feels himself flush and hopes it's too dark for Steve to really notice.  
"It's a navy thing."  
"But you have a lot of them. I mean, these look almost Buddhist." He points to the piece that covers most of the top half of Steve's left arm.  
"Maybe another time?" Steve says all sheepish and soft and shy. "It's really late. We should get home. We both have school tomorrow." He shoulder barges Danny gently and the bubble of tension shifts and stretches in the air around them.

The run home is quiet and far too quick, but Danny feels relaxed in a way he hasn't for a long time, and he's sure he'll sleep.  
"See you tomorrow," Steve says.  
"Yeah. In class and at practice. You'll be sick of seeing me."  
"I could never be sick of you, Danno."  
Steve's use of the nickname Matt had for Danny is like a gut wrench, but in the right way. He hasn't heard it in over three years, and while part of him wants to be a sobbing mess over it, the other half is just so damned pleased to hear it again.  
"I'm sorry," Steve murmurs, mistaking Danny's silence for distress, "I shouldn't have said that."  
Danny launches himself at Steve and grips him in a hug, pressing his forehead into Steve's shoulder. Steve, struggling for a second with his own emotions, hugs back briefly, curling a large, warm hand around Danny's neck. He is stunned by how good it feels, and how normal it feels, to have Danny in his arms.  
"Please, don't stop. I like it," Danny breathes into Steve, before turning on his heel and darting inside before he can embarrass himself any further.

Grace notices immediately that something is different with Danny. He seems somewhat lighter and far more distracted.  
"What's up with you?" she prods again. She must have asked a dozen times in the last twenty minutes, like a dog with a bone.  
Danny wants to tell her so bad that he hugged Steve and Steve hugged him back. But he also wants to keep it, keep Steve, for himself. It's been such a long time since he had something quiet and only for him, and he just isn't ready to give that away yet.  
"I'm just feeling good. I slept better last night and it's Monday, what's not to like?" He glances over Grace's shoulder and sees Steve. His heart leaps into his throat when Steve notices him, nods and smiles, before stepping in to the classroom Principal Grover is showing him in to. Grace turns a moment too late and then turns back, her expression frustrated.  
"Who are you looking at?"  
"Nothing. You're being paranoid," Danny retorts, and then reaches into his pocket and pretends to answer a text on his phone. Grace sighs when it's clear she's getting nowhere.  
"See you at lunch?" she asks.  
"As always," he replies, and she drifts into the milling crowd of students making their way to first period.

"This is it then, Steve. You sure you're good to go? I can release the department head to come do some support if you want, just until you get settled in." Lou Grover stands a good couple of inches taller than Steve, something he's not used to, and he has to glance up to reply.  
"No, Lou, I just want to get settled in with the class. It's not been that long since I was in here myself," he huffs wryly.  
"I know. Little Stevie all grown up! Renee wants me to invite you to dinner, but when you're ready. I know you'll still be settling in."  
"I remember taking your classes, you know." Steve loves the memories of Lou's classes, and the way that Renee doted on him after his own mom died. She came to his games, cheered him on. Matt's family were there too, but they were there to cheer Matt first and him second. He loved being the centre of Renee's attention.  
"I remember you in those classes, Steve. You were way too focused on everything. I thought you were going to work yourself to an early grave! Just remember, everything in moderation. You need a life too, and it's all too easy for this job to take over."  
"Yes, Sir!" Steve mocks and Lou smiles, smacking him on the back.  
"Fine, fine. I'll leave you to it. But remember, open invite for dinner."  
"Will do."  
As Lou strides out, Danny heads in. History is his first class, and he's glad to have a permanent teacher after Mrs Carter retired early, but he also wants to see Steve again. He knows the feelings he has are dangerous, that he could get Steve in trouble, but that doesn't stop him being drawn in.  
"Hey," he says. Steve looks up and breaks out into a beaming smile.  
"Hey, Danno. You going to go easy on me today?"  
Danny delights in the nickname, and the attention, and realises he may be in way over his head.  
"Maybe. Thanks again, for last night." He says the end of the sentence quietly, secretively, doesn't want anyone getting the wrong impression.  
"Anytime. Like I said. Though maybe not tonight, I need to recover from last night first."  
The bell rings and Danny moves to his seat. Second row back, on the left, same seat he has in every class. As Steve turns to write 'Mr McGarrett' on the board, Danny realises this particular seat gives him the most incredible view of Steve's ass, which looks great in the slacks he's wearing for work. While Steve out of cargo pants is really weird, Danny thrills at knowing this about him, that he almost always wears cargo pants if he's not in his running shorts. Danny knows 'Steve', not just Mr or Coach McGarrett, and that's exciting in a way he knows isn't healthy.

Steve is good at what he does, no matter what he puts his mind to, and Danny enjoys the start of the lesson but knows that part of that is seeing Steve. Ten days ago, the thought of this would have left him sick. He hated Steve. Steve was the vessel into which all his anger was poured. Now Danny was staring at him, watching him, lusting after him. It could never go anywhere. Steve wouldn't risk his career, is not even into guys to the best of Danny's knowledge, and sees Danny like a little brother. As the hour progresses, Danny finds his thoughts spiralling, to the point where he's totally lost. He doesn't get much of the assignment done, and has felt his whole demeanour shift. Fucking reality crushing him again. Fuck life. Fuck this. Fuck everything.

Suddenly there's a warm hand on his wrist. His hands are clenched together on the desk, his whole body rigid, and all he can do is stare at the hand. It's warm, gentle but firm, and there seems to be a voice attached to it.  
"Danno? Danny, come on, man. Come back to me." Steve. Steve is the voice. Danny looks up abruptly, and sees Steve is crouched in front of his desk, gently shaking Danny's wrist, trying to draw his attention. The rest of the class is gone and it's just the two of them. Danny feels tears prick at his eyes, feels his breathing start to shallow and his vision start to blur.  
"Panic attack?" Steve asks. Danny can barely nod, but he manages enough. Steve places a hand on Danny's chest firmly.  
"Breathe with me, okay? In for five, out for five." Steve models the movement, pushing his hand in to Danny's chest to encourage him to breathe out. Eventually, Danny feels more normal, though the attack has exhausted him. "Better?" Steve asks. His eyes are worried, but he's trying to keep his body language relaxed. He withdraws his hand, and Danny is cold with it gone. "Does that happen a lot?"  
Danny shakes his head slowly, but he still can't move. "Not really," he starts, before clearing his throat. "Just when reality comes crashing back in to smash up all my hopes and dreams. Nothing major." Danny wants to joke but it isn't funny. He knows it isn't. "I'm sorry, I didn't get the work done, and you must think I'm pretty pathetic."  
"Don't worry about the work. And there is nothing pathetic about panic attacks. They're awful. Do I need to call home, let your parents know about this?"  
That has Danny moving. He stands quickly, starts shoving things into his bag. "Nah, they don't need to know. I'm good. I'll see you at practice, yeah?" He tries to dart past Steve, who stops him with hands to his shoulders. He squeezes gently and Danny looks up into his eyes. The worry is deepened, enriched, and Danny knows he's not going to get away with this. Then Steve looks at him, really looks at him, before seeming to grit his teeth.  
"How about you come to my place, after practice? I'll get pizza in and I'll give you a hand with the work from today and the homework assignment? I'll call your mom and square it away with her. And we can talk, if you want. About anything you need to."  
Danny stares for a moment and can't find any words. Slowly, he nods, and takes a step back out of Steve's hold on him. "You won't tell her though, right. She worries and then she micromanages and then we argue and I don't want that, not right now, not when-"  
"I won't tell her. I think you should, but if you don't want me to I won't. Okay?"  
"Okay." Danny starts to leave and Steve turns back to his desk and begins to sort through papers. "Hey, Steve?"  
"Yeah, Danno?"  
"Thanks, for helping."  
"Anytime. That's a promise."

12:39pm  
 **STEVE M:** You okay?  
 **DANNO** : Just had double maths. Would you be?  
 **STEVE M** : LOL. Prob not. Called Clara. She's good with tonight.  
 **DANNO** : Great.  
 **STEVE M:** You okay?  
 **DANNO** : You already asked that.  
 **STEVE M** : I'll text you my address. 5pm?  
 **DANNO:** See you then.  
Steve puts the phone back in his pocket and smiles to himself. He's glad he can help Danny. Matt would have liked it. Would have wanted Steve to look out for his little brother, make sure he was okay.  
And Steve was fairly certain that this was what he was doing.  
Wasn't it?  
What if it isn't though?  
Steve has a thirty second internal melt down where he questions every decision about today. Should he have put his hands on Danny? Just how wrong was it to invite him over? After all, he's Danny's teacher now.  
Then, Clara's words ring in his ears.  
"Thank you, Steve," she had said when he'd called. "He needs someone to look up to, someone to confide in and look out for him. Thanks for doing that for us."  
Shaking his head, Steve heads to the locker rooms to change for afternoon practice and to catch up with the Coach to find out where the team is up to, forcing all thoughts about being alone with Danny out of his head.  
For now.


	6. Anxieties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A nice quick one while I'm working on the rest of the narrative - just so you know I'm still working on this!

Danny gets home and his mom is waiting in the kitchen. She does this, when he comes home from school, always with cookies and milk. Danny isn't eight anymore, but cookies are great, so he only slightly complains.  
"What's up, Ma?" he asks, enjoying her smile when he uses the pet name he gave her as a toddler.  
"Was going to ask you the same thing," she says. Her eyes have that kind of all-knowing quality that moms get, and Danny hates.  
"Everything's good," Danny shrugs, and reaches for a cookie. Oatmeal raisin. Matt's favourite.  
"Steve called."  
"I know. He said."  
"Why does he need to help you catch up on class work? Why wasn't it done in class?"  
She smacks his hand as he reaches for a second cookie, well aware he's stalling. He desperately doesn't want to tell her about the panic attack. He hasn't had one in a few months, and she gets super over-protective and smothery and it doesn't help. At all.  
"I lost focus, and then couldn't figure it out. Steve offered to help." He tries again for a cookie and this time she allows it. She watches him chew while sipping her own coffee. He turns to go change before heading to Steve's. He doesn't need to change, but he wants to. He's not sure why he thinks he needs to put on a nice shirt and clean jeans, but he feels he should.  
"Just don't take advantage of his time, okay? He needs to be with his family as well as ours."  
"I know," Danny says. "I'm sure it's just a one off, anyway. Probably feels like I'm some sort of charity case and he'll be able to let it go after this."  
"I doubt that," his mom huffs. "Steve cares about you. You were thick as thieves when you were younger, all of you. The way you tagged along with them wherever they went. And they never minded, did they, even though you were almost ten years younger. He probably misses your company."  
Danny pauses for a second and then glances back at his mom. "It's not the same, not now. But maybe he wants a reminder of that?"  
"Maybe," she replies and then waves him away.  
As Danny bounds up the stairs towards his room, he feels excitement building. This isn't a date. It's a tutoring session. But it's also pizza. While Danny has no idea what to expect, he can't wait to find out what the evening holds.

Steve showers when he gets home, tossing a load of laundry in and wiping down the surfaces in the front room and kitchen. Then he mops the floor. Then he checks the mail, even though it was yesterday's mail, and then he moves some throw pillows around.  
What the hell is he doing?  
He realises that he's nervous about showing Danny his home. It's small, but he thinks it's cozy and not stifling. But maybe Danny with hate it, or think it's too impersonal. Steve knows it makes no sense to be worrying what Danny thinks of his home. Somehow it matters and he's just going to accept that for now and worry about it again later. He checks his watch and decides he has another half an hour before Danny shows up. He orders pizza. Two in fact, because he knows Danny will never accept the Hawaiian one he loves, and that he'd rather have pepperoni.  
Steve changes his shirt again.  
Eventually he heads back into the kitchen, digging books and pencils out and putting them onto the breakfast counter where he has decided he and Danny will try and get some work done before dinner. Or maybe after, if the pizza comes quickly.  
There's a knock at the door and Steve glances once more over everything before he goes to answer. He only notices his heart is racing as he reaches for the door handle.

"Hey."  
Danny is standing, hands stuffed in his jeans pocket, brilliant blue shirt that highlights his eyes in a way Steve definitely shouldn't be noticing but does, and his book bag is slung over one shoulder. "Can I come in?" he asks, because Steve is just staring.  
"Of course, of course," Steve says, stepping back. Danny comes in, kicks his sneakers off at the door, and steps slightly further forward. "Kitchen's just down the hall," Steve continues, gesturing, and Danny heads that direction while Steve closes and locks the door. He takes a second, just a second, to catch his breath. He doesn't understand the tumult of feelings racing through him. For so long, he's only felt sad or angry or lonely. Right now? He can't name these feelings and he is kind of enjoying the ride.  
He follows Danny who is already sitting at the breakfast counter when he walks into the kitchen, lifting books from his bag.  
"Do you want a soda? Coffee?"  
"Just water, if that's okay?" Steve nods and lifts two glasses from the cupboard before filling them with water from a jug in the fridge. He puts them on the counter in front of Danny.  
"So, should we go straight to the chapter from today?" Danny asks. He hasn't lifted his eyes yet and seems nervous. Steve is suddenly worried. Danny shouldn't be worried. This is a safe place.  
"Sure, Danno. If you want. We can get straight on with work, or we can just catch up for a bit first if you'd like? You know, if you want?" He swallows but tries for a reassuring smile.  
"If I don't get this done, my mom is going to be on both of our cases. How about get this done, and if it's not too late we can catch up? If I'm not in the way of you seeing Mary or anything."  
"I have the whole night for you, Danny. Mary's not expecting me today. So let's get on with the work and see if we can get it done before the pizza."  
Steve sits down and Danny can smell his cologne, and fabric softener and something coconut (his shampoo maybe?). Danny looks up briefly, straight into Steve's eyes. There's a sharp spike of adrenaline suddenly surging through him and he loves the rapid sensation. Steve's leg presses again his own, a barely there sensation of presence, and Danny doesn't even know if Steve realises he's doing it. As Steve starts to go through the work from that morning, Danny focuses back on the history and less on Steve, in the hopes he can hold himself together.

It's going to be a long night.


	7. Memories and mozzarella

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay between the last chapter and this. It was life getting in the way of the muse, but I think things are settling down a little now. I hope so, anyway!  
> Thank you for all of the lovely comments and kind words, for the kudos and the bookmarks. I really hope you enjoy the torturous slow build of this chapter! *laughs wickedly*

When the doorbell rings to signify the arrival of pizza, Danny is just finishing up the last question. He isn’t sure if he should offer to just go, seeing as how the tutoring session is over, but he is also struggling to think clearly because Steve still has his thigh pressed against his. He glances up and straight into Steve’s eyes. Danny has always known they were blue, but tonight they appear ocean blue on the edge of stormy: grey tendrils seeming to churn and twist. He sees the corners of those eyes turn up and realises Steve is smiling.  
“I’ll go grab dinner. We’ll go eat in the front room, if that’s okay? I can probably find a game to watch.”  
And with that he’s gone, as are those beautiful eyes and the heat of his thigh. Danny scrubs his hands over his face and takes a deep, shaky breath. This was a bad idea because Danny is fixating on this man who is not just Matty’s best friend, which was fucking awkward enough, but is now also his teacher and his coach. He slides off the breakfast bar seat and shoves his books and pens into his bag. Not sure what to do with it then, he leaves it on the counter and heads in the direction Steve pointed.

This was a bad idea. Steve shuffles around in his pocket and digs out the cash for the pizza and enough for a tip, thanking the delivery guy who looks about twelve, and then leaning against the closed door to catch his breath. What is he doing? Something seems to be changing with him and Danny and it’s not a good thing. Well, it feels good, but he knows that it’s also dangerous. He draws in a shaky breath and fills his lungs with the scent of dough and cheese, and underneath that he gets pineapple and pepperoni. His stomach growls and he senses no real reason to put this off. It will be good for Danny. Seeing that panic attack hit him this morning was like a knife to the gut, and it took all he had in him to fight off his own. It was Danny, though, and he hated seeing the kid in that much pain.

Kid. Was he really a kid though? Seventeen wasn’t exactly Duplo bricks and diapers, was it? And Danny was bright, and funny, and he cared way too damn much about everything. That was the Danny Steve remembered. All those nights listening to Danny and Matt rib each other, wind each other up, call each other putz and doofus and Neanderthal. It had been like home to Steve, a place his soul could go to rest from all the tension and confusion at home.  
“Hey. You okay? You need me to go?” Danny’s voice is soft, uncomfortable maybe? Steve opens his eyes and looks at the young man before him and sees that it is one hundred percent worry and he smiles quickly.  
“No, not at all. I’m fine. Just . . .” But he doesn’t know what to say so he just smiles again and pushes off the door, pizza boxes in hand.  
“You planning on more people coming?” Danny asks, looking pointedly at the boxes.  
“No,” Steve huffs, slightly embarrassed, “I just know you don’t like pineapple so I got you pepperoni.”  
“You remembered my pizza preference?” Danny asks, his voice slightly wonderous, and Steve knows this conversation could head somewhere dangerous if he’s not careful.  
“Of course!” he deflects, “you ranted enough about it there’s no way anyone within a five block radius of your house could forget!” Steve squeezes past Danny into the lounge and puts the boxes on the little coffee table, pushing the lids off each before reaching for the remote. The ridiculously-sized television faces the not-so-spacious two seat couch, but there’s no way Steve is going to sit in the leather chair off centre and ruin his view of the game just because occasionally his thoughts about Danny aren’t totally professional. They’re just thoughts; they don’t mean anything.  
“Come, sit. Dig in. I’ll grab some napkins.”  
Danny sits on the sofa, left hand side so closest to the door, and Steve wonders if that’s intentional as he heads back to the kitchen for napkins.

The game has been on for around an hour, half of each pizza is congealing in the box, and neither Steve nor Danny is paying attention to either.  
“And . . . and that time . . . that time he thought the kiddie slide was a great idea for exercise, so he tried to run up it. But he slipped,” Danny gasps for breath, the laughter leaving his joy breathless, “and smacked his chin into the metal. That bruise! Was like a month before it went, and I dug at him constantly!”  
Steve is laughing along. This trip down memory lane has been good for both of them, he thinks lightly while listening to yet another story of Matty-is-an-idiot-sometimes. Danny is alight with it, like a weight he’s been lugging about is suddenly shifted. Not gone, because there’s still tension around his eyes, but they’re bright again, and it’s dazzling.  
“Steve?” Danny asks, trying to get his attention back from wherever it has wandered off to.  
“Sorry. Just remembering that bruise,” he smiles softly.  
During their laughter, each man has twisted to face the other, arms on the back of the couch, one leg each folded up between them. Danny is struck by how informal this is, how unusual, and a sudden dart of panic shoots through him and stiffens his spine.  
“What was that?” Steve asks, noting the sudden change.  
“Nothing. Just thinking I should probably get home. My mom will be wondering where I’ve gotten to.”  
“You don’t have to,” Steve says softly. “I mean, I texted her when dinner got here, and she said to just have a good time.  
“A good time? What does she think we’re doing? It’s just tutoring.” Danny shrugs, but the distinct lack of books kind of contradicts what he’s saying, and they both know it.  
“If you want to go, that’s fine. But if you don’t want to, maybe we can put a movie on and forget about . . . about everything, for a while. You can call and let your mom know.”  
“Won’t the school have a problem with this?” Danny asks, gesturing between them both.  
“With what? You’re my best friend’s brother, we used to hang out all the time when you were a kid. And your mom thought it would be good for you to spend some time with me.” Steve doesn’t add that he agrees with her. Tonight, talking about Matt the person rather than Matt the ghost has been liberating.  
Danny, meanwhile, didn’t miss the shift in tone. Steve didn’t call him a kid now, he called him a kid in the past. Something a little like hope bursts in his chest, even though he knows he’s being ridiculous and that there is no way Steve would ever _want_ him, someone like him, but that hope burns restlessly, and Danny finds himself agreeing.  
“Movie. Okay, but no sappy drama or stupid war movie.”  
“Deal,” Steve says, standing and grabbing the pizza boxes to put them in the fridge. They’ll do for dinner for the next couple of nights. “You scroll though and pick something, and I’ll grab some more sodas.”

Danny picked some ridiculous comedy that neither is really watching. The room has gone dark, with just the flickering lights of the television to illuminate the space. Danny is lost in his thoughts. For a change, they aren’t the fucking miserable kind, and he has found himself remembering more stories about the brother who should be here with them but isn’t. Steve sits close by, a respectable distance between them, but Danny has also spent the last half hour (in between Matt memories) wishing Steve would reach over and touch him. His heart is racing, all sense of rhythm lost, while he craves Steve’s hand in his, or better still on his thigh, or. . . He shuts down those thoughts. Getting hard sitting on Steve’s couch would be the ultimate humiliation. Thing is, Danny knows it won’t happen. Pretty certain that Steve is as straight as they come—he was in the navy for god’s sake, don’t they have some sort of rules about that?—Danny knows his thoughts are really the fantasies of a horny teenager.

Steve glances at Danny again. He seems relaxed, but every now and again he shifts a little uncomfortably on the couch, like he needs something. Steve isn’t really sure what it is. _He’s_ spent the last half hour or so trying to quash the impulse to touch. Danny is right there and, while he didn’t really realise before tonight just how attracted to Danny he is, now that he understands all his feelings around Danny he is finding it hard not to explore them. Thing is, Steve knows that it can’t happen. He’s older, by quite a bit, and Danny is a kid in his class and a player on his team. But Danny is also Danno and Steve is struggling to reconcile that. He wants to run his fingers through Danno’s hair, wants to press his fingers into Danno’s skin, wants to taste . . . He shuts those thoughts down. Getting hard on his couch would be the ultimate humiliation.

As the final credits roll, Steve realises that Danny has nodded off. His breathing is light and relaxed and, while sleeping on the couch isn’t going to be good for him, sleep really is. He fires off a text to Clara to say Danny is asleep and to ask if he should wake him. He waits seconds, before the silent message comes back.

 **CLARA W** : If you’re okay with him there, then can he sleep? I know he doesn’t and he needs to.  
 **Steve** : Yep. I’ll see if he wakes up soon but he’s fine here. Good actually.  
 **CLARA W** : You guys talk?  
 **Steve** : Some  
 **CLARA W** : I know he misses Matt. You too. Think you need each other right now.  
 **Steve** : Thanks.  
 **CLARA W** : Glad you can keep an eye on him for me. He needs a big brother right now. Night x

Steve swallows uncomfortably. Big brother? He’s pretty sure the thoughts he is having right now are not in the least bit brotherly. Steve wants to curl up around Danny, sleep with his nose pressed in to the skin of Danny’s neck, and it is taking _every_ _ounce_ of will power he has not to follow his impulses. Instead, he shuffles down a little and rests his own head on the back of the couch, closing his eyes. He too drifts off to sleep to the sounds of soft breathing next to him.

It’s dark when Steve awakes. He’s breathing heavily, the last fingers of the nightmare still squeezing at his chest. He’s shaking, too, clammy and nauseous. He puts his head in his hands and struggles to catch himself before he falls into the looming panic attack.  
“Steve, you okay?” Sleep soft, Danny’s voice filters through the confusion, and Steve feels Danny’s warm hand on his shoulder like an anchor point. The heat brings him home, and his rapid breathing quickly eases. He turns slightly to look at Danny, whose eyes are bright in the grey light from the television.  
“Yeah. Nightmare I guess,” Steve says. He’s trembling a little but doesn’t want to shrug Danny’s hand away.  
“Do you have them a lot?”  
“You could say that,” Steve replies, reluctant to blurt out 'every fucking night' despite it being the truth.  
“What can I do?” Danny asks, squeezing Steve’s shoulder gently. Steve looks at Danny, his Danno, and breathes in a slow, deep breath.  
“Stay?” he asks, shakily.  
“I’m already here, doofus, I’m not going anywhere.” Danny smiles and then sits back, running his fingers through his hair. “Besides, pretty sure Mom would be unhappy about me walking home alone at this hour.”  
Steve shivers at the use of doofus because it seems really familiar, close and personal.  
“But, we can’t stay down here on the couch all night,” Danny says. “You got a spare bed?”  
“Don’t even have a spare room, just the one bed I’m afraid.”  
“Well, I’m sure we can make that work,” Danny says and stands, holding out his hand to Steve. Steve can see that Danny is now the one trembling. Steve knows that this moment is possibly going to change everything. If he rejects Danny, he’s going to lose everything with him most likely. Steve couldn’t bare that, but it’s not a reason to do something stupid or something he doesn’t want to do. He’s pretty sure the last part isn’t an issue.  
“It’s just sleep, Steve, but if we neither of us get any that’s just going to make it all worse.” Danny’s hand still reaches for him, and Steve takes it, pushing rational thought out of his head. Danny tangles their fingers together and Steve stands. Tension literally crackles between them and Steve supresses a shiver as Danny leads the way towards the staircase and the only obvious location of Steve’s bedroom.

Danny let’s Steve take over at the top of the stairs. He shows Danny the bathroom, but Danny just wants sleep right now, and he shakes his head. Steve leads them to his room, turning on the soft lamp. Danny sits on one side and Steve just looks.  
“If you want me to go, or go back downstairs, it doesn’t change anything,” Danny says, his eyes shy and his breathing rapid. “But you said you wanted me to stay. Is this what you meant?”  
“I don’t know what I meant, only that I don’t want to . . . it’s just sleep, right?”  
Steve tugs off his socks and shirt, before rummaging in a drawer. He turns and tosses spare shorts and t shirt to Danny and then leaves to use the bathroom, and to give Danny some space to change.  
When he returns, his own sleep shorts and shirt on already, Danny is under the covers, and his jeans and shirt are folded neatly on the dresser top.

Steve turns off the lamp and waits a moment for his eyes to adjust to the new gloom. The drapes are open, and some moonlight filters in. Danny is rigid in bed, nervous now that this is actually where they have ended up. Steve is nervous too, but it’s too late to back out now, and the idea of having someone in his bed with him for the first time in far too long is overtly appealing. He slides under the covers—a couple of light sheets because it’s always warm in Hawai’i—and pulls them up to his chest. Danny’s breaths are shallow and fast but Steve feels relaxed all at once, like this is where he is meant to be. Carefully, so as not to do anything he shouldn’t, he reaches one arm under the covers and takes Danny’s hand.  
“Thank you, Danno,” he says, closing his eyes.  
“Anytime,” is Danny’s quiet reply, before he twists their fingers together more tightly.


	8. Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Life is surprisingly busy considering we can't go anywhere or do anything! I hope you enjoy! Thank you for all the comments and kudos. This is looking like it will be my longest fic, and it's about time. I'm sorry you get so little from me, so thanks for your patience!

It is still dark when Steve wakes. Danny is sleeping, breaths soft in the air, and he has hardly moved. Their fingers are still entwined, and Steve realises that’s probably what woke him. Strange to be connected to someone like this after such a long time. Steve’s mind flashes back to images of Freddie, tucked up in the same fox hole, both working hard to pretend they weren’t drawn to each other while keeping each other alive. Matty had understood. Steve bites back tears which are sudden in their appearance, and painful in their presence. The absence of Matt is sometimes so intense that he doesn’t know what to do with it all and it overwhelms him. He’s gotten better at pushing it to one side and pretending it’s not there but he’s really aware how unhealthy that is.

Danny stirs and turns slightly to face Steve, opening his eyes and blinking slowly up at him. Steve is staring and he really shouldn’t be, but he can’t help himself. There has always been something magnetic about Danny, even when he was much younger. Bold, confident, plenty of swagger behind it. Steve smiles over at him and squeezes their fingers.  
“Hey.”  
“Hey. What time is it?” Danny asks.  
“Late. Or Early.” Steve shrugs slightly and notices that neither he nor Danny seem to want to let go of the other.  
“Why are you awake? Another dream?”  
Steve shakes his head. “No idea. Just woke up.” That’s when Steve feels it, deep in his gut. The attraction that he has for Danny swelling into something bigger, something hard to ignore or push away. He swallows. He can’t do this. He can’t. It’s not fair to put Danny in this position. Steve is the older one, the wiser one, the role model and the authority figure. He needs to lie back, put some distance between them. He needs to be the adult.  
“What are you thinking about?” Danny asks. He turns a little more, facing Steve properly and squeezing their fingers together again.

Danny watches a thousand thoughts race across Steve’s face and flicker behind his eyes like moths. Danny’s heart is racing again. He’s not sure how he fell asleep at all, what with the closeness and the scent of Steve all around him, but somehow he did. And quickly, too. But he had felt the shifting nearby and it had slowly roused him. And now Steve is staring at him and Danny isn’t sure whether he is being looked at or looked through.  
“You,” Steve says after an eternity of silence, “And me.”  
“There’s a you and me?” Danny asks, an eyebrow quirked.  
“No. Yes,” Steve huffs a gentle laugh and looks over at Danny again. “I'm your teacher, Danno.”  
“And my brother’s best friend. And my parents’ extra son. And my friend, too, at least I thought so.”  
“Does that change things?” Steve asks. Danny realises that they are having a very different discussion than he first thought.  
“Change what things?” Danny’s voice is barely a whisper.  
“When I look at you, here and now, _in my bed_ , it feels right in more ways than it should. I’ve seen you for just a few hours in the last three years, but I feel like I know you. All of that is really fucking scary.” Steve stretches his free hand across the bed and traces Danny’s jawline in the shadows of his room. “I’m not allowed to feel the way I do about you.”  
Danny swallows audibly.  
“And I have no idea if you feel like this about me.” There is a sudden moment of realisation in Steve’s eyes and he drops Danny’s hand, sitting up suddenly in the bed and dropping his head into his hands. “Shit. What am I doing?”

Danny sits up and touches Steve’s forearm. The traces of ink stretching out from under Steve’s sleeve catch his eye for a moment, drawing his attention, but only briefly.  
“Steve,” he says, gently tugging on Steve’s arm. “Look at me.”  
“I’m sorry, Danno,” Steve says as he turns his face to look at Danny.  
“I’m not,” Danny replies. “I have had the most ridiculous crush on you since I was, I don’t know, thirteen? I had no idea that you were gay, otherwise I would probably have turned on the charm sooner.” It’s said ironically, and Steve’s small smile shows that Danny hit his mark with the comment.  
“Bi, not gay. Though maybe men a little more than women. I don’t know. I told Matty, once.”  
“Told him what? That you were bi?”  
“Nah, he knew that. I told him I thought you were cute.”  
Danny laughs out loud at that. “I bet that went well!”  
“He told me I had to wait until you were all grown up and could make your own decisions. But he said I was a good guy, and that you could do a lot worse. I’m not so sure about that.”  
“I am, sure I mean.”  
Danny waits a little while longer for Steve to stop berating himself, and then takes a deep breath.  
“What does this mean?”  
His question hangs in the air and dances between them.  
“It means that we both like each other,” Steve says with a smile, “and that I feel like a twelve year old saying it. But it means nothing changes. I can be your friend, Danny, but nothing more. We can’t betray your parents’ trust like that. And I’m still your teacher.”  
“So, what you’re saying is I have to wait for you,” Danny asks quietly.  
“What I’m saying is, I will wait for you. To try this, later, when you’re older.”  
Danny drops the hand which had been resting on Steve’s arm and sits back with a huff. “I’m hardly a kid,” he huffs, painfully aware that the sulking isn’t really helping his case.  
“I didn’t say you were. I don’t see you as a kid. Losing Matty changed you: changed us.”  
“I can’t ask you to wait,” Danny continues, “I have almost a year left of school, Mr McGarrett.”  
“I’ve waited a long time just to hear you say that you liked me,” Steve says, feeling himself blush. “I feel like a kid again just saying that. I don't mind waiting longer.”  
“Can I ask for one thing?”  
“Sure, Danno, of course.”  
“Kiss me? Just once. So I know what I’m waiting for?” Danny knows he’s pushing it, that it’s highly unlikely Steve is going to agree. But he couldn’t help asking. He wants so badly to know what Steve’s mouth feels like against his own, what Steve tastes like.  
“Danno,” Steve breathes, “You know we can’t.”

Danny takes a deep breath. He wants to push, to ask for it again, to try one more time, but he also doesn’t want to put Steve in that position. He smiles, then lays back down, settling in to the pillow.  
“I don’t know that,” he adds at the last minute. “I know we shouldn’t, which is very different to can’t.”  
Steve looks down at Danny, really looks. Danny’s hair looks darker in the moonlight, his eyes more gray than blue, and he looks at home.  
“Fuck it,” Steve whispers, whether to himself or Danny is unclear. Steve twists and leans over Danny, stroking his index finger across Danny’s cheekbone. “One can’t hurt.” Steve leans closer and presses his lips to Danny’s gently while Danny’s eyes slip closed. Steve turns a little, angles more, and deepens the kiss. Danny’s mouth gasps open and Steve’s tongue slips in a little, stroking Danny’s and coaxing a groan from him. Steve’s body begins to light up everywhere and he presses his chest to Danny’s, sliding his fingers up into his hair and tugging slightly. Danny gasps into Steve’s mouth again, and places his hands against Steve’s chest, feeling Steve’s rapid breaths as though they were his own. Steve’s twists his tongue again, deepens the kiss further, pressing himself closer, until he feels Danny’s erection pressing in to his leg. That jars him back and reminds him what he’s doing and who he’s doing it with. He presses his forehead to Danny’s and gasps in shallow breaths.  
“Shit. I’m sorry.”  
“I’m not,” Danny says, sucking in a breath and palming his erection to ease the discomfort.  
“We can’t do that again,” Steve says, lying back in the bed.  
“Well, we shouldn’t but we—”  
“Stop it!” Steve laughs, and Danny joins him.

“I made coffee,” Danny says as Steve comes in to the kitchen. “I thought I’d let you sleep.”  
“Thanks.” Steve is still in the shorts and tee he slept in, his hair slightly wild. But Danny’s eyes drop quickly to Steve’s mouth and he finds himself remembering everything from the night before. He licks his lips without thinking and Steve coughs.  
“Stop it,” he warns, his tone dark but his eyes also focused on Danny’s mouth. “We need to forget about . . . that.”  
“Sure,” Danny says. “I’ve got to get home to change for school. I’ll see you there?”  
Steve nods and Danny picks up his bag.  
“You know we can’t tell anyone, right?” Steve asks, an embarrassed flush colouring his cheekbones.  
“I know. I don’t want to.”  
Danny leaves the room and, seconds later, Steve hears the snick of the front door closing. He lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding, rests his palms on the breakfast island and lets his head hang down between his shoulders. What had he been thinking? Having Danny over had been risky in the first place. Then asking him to stay, which was stupid and dangerous, but then Danny in his bed.  
And the kiss.

Steve’s cock twitched as the memories of the kiss flooded back. Danny’s taste filled his mouth, the smell of him clouded his thoughts, and the sensation of Danny’s cock against his thigh. Steve shivers and turns quickly, heading straight for the bathroom, trying to shake Danny from his mind. He turns the water on, the temperature as low as he can stand, and steps in after shrugging off his clothes. He lathers quickly, washing his hair and chest and studiously trying to ignore the swollen penis straining even in the cold. He lifts his face to the water, rinsing his mouth and trying to drown out the taste of Danny. Even as he thinks it, his cock throbs once more and Steve can’t ignore it any longer. He tips a little more body wash into his palm and smooths it along the length of himself. He groans a little, dropping his head and placing his other palm against the wall. As he strokes, he hears Danny in his mind, tastes the memory of him on his tongue, and shudders as his orgasm swells up from his balls and fills his hand.  
“Fuck,” he gasps, shaking his head.

“Danny?”  
“Yeah, mom!” Danny calls from the hall way. His mom appears around the kitchen door, drying her hands on a dishcloth and leaning against the frame.  
“You have a good night, hon?” she asks.  
“I got all my work done. Steve was a big help,” he said.  
“Did you talk?” she asks. Danny swallows and hopes to god that his face hides his true thoughts.  
“A little.”  
“Good.” His mom seems placated enough and Danny starts to head for the stairs and a hot shower before school. “If you want to go back, to spend more time with him, that would be okay. I think it would be good for you both, to remember Matty together.” Her eyes fill with tears and Danny feels a swell of guilt fill him.  
“Yeah, mom. If he asks, I’ll think about it.”  
“I’ve invited him for dinner on Sunday,” she says as she turns away and heads back to the kitchen. “I think that will be good for us, too.”

Danny pounds up the stairs and shuts himself in his room. Slumping down on the edge of the bed, he presses his hands to his eyes and groans. What was he thinking? Danny’s tongue slipped out across his bottom lip and he moaned quietly at the contact.

He thought he was fucked before, but he was truly fucked now. How was he going to look at Steve in class and not get hard? He was hard now, still frustrated from the lack of release last night. He tugs off his shirt and pants and grabs a towel, heading for the bathroom and a hot shower.  
Or maybe a cold one.

As Steve steps back into his bedroom, temporarily sated, he notices the clothes he had given to Danny are neatly folded on the end of the bed. He lift the shirt to his nose and breathes in. His dick twitches valiantly and Steve drops the tee again and steps back.

It was going to be a long day.  
A long year.


	9. Overlook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates in two days, look at me!

When Steve sets off for work that morning, he feels lighter than he has in years. The memory of Danny is all over him and consumes every thought and sensation he has. He knows he’s grinning like a dumb idiot, but he can’t manage to care. That is, until the school building looms in front of him. A heavy weight settles over him, and he recognises it as grief. He had Danny in his bed last night, he kissed him—a lot—and yet, Danny is his student and his best friend’s little brother.  
Fuck.

Maybe it’s just lust, Steve chides himself as he strolls into the building and heads for the faculty lounge. (He needs caffeine now the emotional high has come crashing down.) It’s been a good while since he was intimate with anyone, and Danny was right there, offering himself. Steve just lost control, right? Just a lapse of focus, seduced by temptation and willingness. Steve winces at how awful that sounds in his head, how wrong. Because he knows what he said to Danny last night was true, and that kissing him was the most incredible sensation, but he also knows just how much shit it could all stir up. His phone vibrates in his pocket and he lifts it out, thumbing through the passcode as he steps into the lounge.

The message is from Clara and Steve realises his breath is caught in his throat, not moving in or out.  
 **CLARA** : Thanks for looking after Danny last night. He seems better already. Maybe you could mentor him a bit? Sorry, cheeky request I know! Dinner will be at 3 on Sunday. Is that okay?  
Steve’s heart is thrumming in his chest like a wild bird beating its wings. She clearly doesn’t know exactly what he was doing with Danny last night, but it’s also clear that Danny has gone home and seemed different.

God, they need to be careful. He swallows a mouthful of scalding coffee and then grimaces. He reaches into the refrigerator and lifts out butter, scooping some into his coffee.  
“You can take the sailor out of the navy, but you can’t take his butter out of his coffee!” laughs Lou as he approaches.  
“Sorry! I know it’s weird, but I’m lacking a little energy today so need the pick me up,” Steve explains needlessly, lifting the cup to his lips and appreciating the improvement.  
“Everything okay?” Lou asks. He is way too insightful and Steve realises that he’s going to need to be more wary of him than any of the other faculty, because Lou knows him unlike anyone else. He knew him years before, knows him now, and he’s watching. “You remember what I said, you need time and you tell me. I can work something out.”  
“I’m good, Lou,” Steve replies, shoving one hand over his phone screen as subtly as he can. Lou watches him for another moment, and then smiles.  
“You coming for dinner any time soon? The Grover house is always waiting for you!”  
“Thanks. I have plans this weekend, maybe another time. Soon, I promise.”  
“Plans? Someone special?” Lou probes. He has mentioned a couple of times that he thinks Steve just needs to get out into the world again, despite Steve protesting that he wasn’t really ready.  
“The Williams’ house.”  
“Is that a good idea?” Lou asks, while Steve desperately quells the need to run away like a scolded toddler. “You aren’t moving on if you’re clinging to the past.”  
“Closest thing I have to family, besides you, obviously,” Steve replies. “I think it helps, actually, being with them. They treat me the same, there’s no pity or anger. They make me laugh.”  
“Well, okay then.” Lou gives him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder before the first bell rings, warning them school is almost due to start.

Steve puts his mug down on the counter and taps out a quick reply to Clara.  
 **STEVE** : Sure, 3pm is good. Should I bring anything?  
The response pings back almost instantly.  
 **CLARA** : Not a thing. Just you and that smile of yours!  
Clara always was a bit of a flirt. He stuffs the phone away and heads out to class, buttery coffee and wary attitude in tow.

Third period history brings Danny to his classroom. Steve realises in an instant that he has no idea how to act around Danny now. Part of him wants to kiss him again a lot, and for a long time. The more rational side tells him to ignore Danny completely, but the Steve part of him, the part that is all heart and no brain, wants to talk to him, to hear his voice. All these warring thoughts and emotions have him like a deer in headlights, and he quickly glances down to his desk and begins to flick through the textbook they need.  
“Morning, Coach!” comes a cheerful voice, from Grace he thinks. She sits in the chair next to Danny who looks a little uncomfortable, confused almost, but a hell of a lot more together than he feels.  
“Good morning. Shall we get started?”

Steve launches himself into his job. He loves history; it’s something his mom instilled in him from an early age. She told him that history was where you learned from most, because you got to see the mistakes other people made so you didn’t make them yourself. She wasn’t wrong. Steve could already think of a half dozen or so people who had fucked around with younger bed-buddies and it hadn’t gone well. Hell, Henry the eighth was like the poster-man for stupidity in love.

When he settled the class to working, he took a moment to look over them all. They were mostly focused, though one kid in the back kept sending texts and Steve was frustrated but also entertained as he tried—and failed—to be subtle about the whole process. He skims down and across rows until his eyes fall upon the blonde crown of Danny’s head. He is focused today, no traces of panic or discomfort, but he must feel Steve’s eyes on him because he glances up and holds the gaze a moment, gives Steve a soft smile, and then looks back down to his work. Steve takes a shaky breath and then pushes off his desk to go help Willow in the other corner of the room.

Danny squashes the glee that overwhelms him when he catches Steve watching him. It’s delicious and warm inside him, but he tucks it down and keeps it for himself. He knows that Steve is probably regretting every choice he made last night, because it was dangerous and stupid and Danny knows this very well, thank you very much.

But it was also hot as hell and that doesn’t just go away, no matter what you do in the shower to relieve it. Danny glances back down to his work and realises that half of what he’s written Is utter nonsense, and the other half gibberish. So, he’s not overly focused this morning, he’ll make it up. The bell rings and he begins to stuff his papers into his bag when Grace catches his eye.  
“What's up with you today?” she asks quietly. “You’re all jittery. It’s weird.”  
“Nothing,” Danny says, focusing on his books, but he knows Steve heard her when he looks back up to see the man in question not too far behind Grace, eyes a little wide and nostrils flaring in panic.  
“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” Grace probes.  
“Of course!” he lies, swallowing back the guilt he feels. “I didn’t sleep too good, kept waking up, and think I’ve over-caffeinated to compensate. I’m good though, okay?”  
She looks appeased and Steve’s face is mass of contradiction: relief and terror is an odd mix. He doesn’t have time to question it though as he hurries from the classroom and onto lunch.

Danny loses focus for much of the day, and doesn’t really remember much of what he’s supposedly learnt. But he does make it to practice, early, and notes that only Steve is on the field when he arrives. Danny wages a quick internal battle: go and talk to him and risk attracting attention or head back to the locker room and wait out some of the guys?

It’s quick, though, because the shirt Steve is wearing fits his arms nicely, creates a delicious V across his shoulders to his waist, and Danny just wants to be closer.  
“Hey,” he says, warning Steve he’s arriving seems like a good plan.  
“Hey yourself,” Steve smiles. Then he seems to catch himself and glances around the field. “We shouldn’t be seen together, like this. It’s not safe.”  
Danny nods a moment, as though in agreement, and then starts to shake his head. “You’re wrong,” he says softly. “Everyone, literally everyone, knows you were Matt’s best friend and that we all used to hang out as kids. Everyone,” he stresses, hands pressed together in front of him like he's praying. “I think it would look more odd if we didn’t get seen together. You know?”

Steve mulls over what Danny has said, and realises that he’s mostly right. They have known each other a long time, but they should still be careful.  
“Okay,” he appeases, “but at a safe distance.”  
Danny looks down to the three feet of space between them and then looks back up with a confused glance.  
“Still too close for me, Danno,” Steve smirks, “I just want to touch you and I think I can probably reach from here.” Then he winks. The cheeky bastard has the audacity to wink! Danny flushes all over and his breath leaves him in a short, erotic gasp, which punishes Steve as much as he had teased Danny.  
“Fuck,” Danny groans and then steps back a little more. “Better?” he asks, and Steve smiles broadly in return.  
“Not really,” he shrugs, “but I’ll take it for now.”  
“Can we run tonight?” Danny asks. Steve looks at him, the mood suddenly more sombre. Their mutual nightmares and difficulty sleeping is what drew them closer, but Steve will never be glad of it.  
“If you need to. I'll always run with you, Danno,” Steve says softly. Gooseflesh ripples across Danny’s skin at the tone, and he wonders exactly what each and every layer in that sentence really means. The spell is suddenly broken as the rest of his team begin to pile onto the field, laughing and jeering, and Danny steps back a few more paces and looks around.  
“Tonight then?” he asks.  
“I’ll wait for your message,” Steve says, before jogging over to where the team are gathered. Danny draws in a shaky breath and watches him go, or rather watches his ass go, then he looks about himself guiltily. This is going to be much harder than he thought.

The sky is stormy above them as they run tonight. Danny didn’t send a message to Steve until it was almost one a.m. Steve didn’t ask why it was so late, but Danny looked awful when he arrived outside the Williams’ house. He’d been waiting, running gear and sneakers on, phone in hand. He had almost decided that Danny had changed his mind, hopefully falling asleep, when his phone vibrated to the contrary. He was out of the door before he’d even finished reading the text.

They don’t speak as they run. Steve lets Danny dictate their route, and Danny leads them away from the coast and into the hills. Steve’s legs burn and his chest heaves, but it feels good to be so worked out. Danny still looks odd, and Steve is grateful when he leads them into a small clearing with a handful of picnic benches and a water fountain.

“What’s going on with you?” Steve asks quietly after they’ve drunk their fill. They sit with their backs resting against the wood of the table, legs stretched out, looking through a gap in the trees and over the landscape of Honolulu and Waikiki. Steve is momentarily shocked at how far they’ve come but is broken from it when Danny drops his head to his hands and leans forwards, blowing out with an angry sigh.  
“I don’t really know,” is all he says. Steve can feel tension radiating from him and wants to push. But he knows Danny and he waits. The kid could never keep a rant in, and now that he’s a young man Steve expects it’s one of the many things that hasn’t changed.

“Last night,” Danny says eventually, his eyes still on the earth at his feet.  
“What about it?” Steve probes gently, though he shivers slightly at the memory.  
“I guess, while eating dinner with my family, I realised that we aren’t going to have that again, are we?” Steve doesn’t reply, just waits some more. Danny doesn’t disappoint. “And that sucks, because it was amazing. Just kissing you was amazing. But I’m a kid, and despite everything you said last night and today, I have this stupid voice inside saying that I can’t have that. Not with you. Not with anyone, maybe. Because I’m just a short, mouthy kid whose brother is dead, and I’m just the pity case.

“My mom wouldn’t shut up about you tonight. And about how I seemed different. She said it was happiness I was feeling and I should embrace it, but I didn’t feel happy, Steve. I felt scared, scared that we would be caught or that it never happened or that . . . I don’t know! Shit!”

Danny stands up and storms away, clenching his fists, before stopping closer to the edge of the overlook they have found themselves on. Steve waits a minute and takes everything in. This last twenty-four hours or so has been a roller coaster, but he knows that having Danny in his bed was the thing that felt the most right – the most real. But Danny is suddenly all over the place and now Steve has no idea what either of them really wants or needs. Taking a breath, he stands and walks over to where Danny continues to be tormented by his own insecurities and demons.

“I’m sorry,” Danny says as Steve approaches. “Kind of proving my point about me being a kid, aren’t I? The irony isn’t lost on me.” He folds his arms over his chest and looks out over the twinkling town below.  
“Don’t be sorry. This is confusing for me too. I don’t know what I was thinking asking you to stay yesterday. Being selfish and greedy, I suppose. But, man, I didn’t realise how much I felt before last night.” He turns to Danny, tugging on a shoulder to have him turn as well. Danny faces him and his eyes are dark, saddened.  
“How do you feel?”  
“I don’t know,” Danny mutters.  
“What do you want?”  
There is a stretch of silence and Steve almost steps back.  
“I want you. I have for a long time. I don’t know why or what it is, but I want you.”  
Steve swallows. He has always been dreadful at discussing his feelings, but Danny seems to draw everything out of him. Why is he so easy to talk to?  
“I want you too,” he whispers, low and breathless. “Can you wait for me?”  
“Wait?” Danny asks, confused.  
“Until you’ve graduated, until there’s a bit of space between you and school.”  
Danny thinks for a moment. It’s logical. Step back, focus on school, get graduated and get out. But then what?  
“I’ll have college. I don’t . . . I’m not sure if I’ll still be . . . on the islands or if . . .” Danny’s voice trails away.  
“So, what you’re saying is, there might not be a future for us anyway, even if we got into whatever this is between us now instead of waiting.” Steve sounds broken and Danny feels that sound, way down deep in his chest.  
“I don’t know.” It’s all he can manage. He looks up into Steve’s eyes and wonders what they were even thinking sleeping together last night. But then something changes in Steve’s eyes, in the way he holds himself. He’s made a decision and Danny can feel it.  
“Then I guess we’d better enjoy what we have now,” he says, before taking Danny with a searing kiss.

Danny gasps between attacks and Steve kisses him, over and over, nipping at his lips and sucking at his tongue. Danny loves the feel of Steve’s fingers in his hair, and the possessive hand at his waist, and just absorbs the man pressing his very being into him. His heart gallops, his fingers ache from where they grip Steve’s biceps, and his cock is heavy against his leg. He opens his mouth wider, takes more of Steve’s tongue, and goes along for the ride.

Steve’s brain is screaming at him to stop. If they get caught, he’s done. If this doesn’t stop, he’s done. If he hurts Danny, he’s done. But his brain wasn’t part of this decision. The idea that Danny might leave nearly broke him, and he couldn’t let him go without having more, taking more. The wrongness of it all is easy to ignore when Danny is tangled with him and stealing his breath. He _wants_ : it’s a level of want he doesn’t ever remember having before. He wants to touch and taste and love on the man in front of him. Boy! Man? It doesn’t matter right now, because Danny is gasping and moaning, and now Steve’s cock is definitely in on the programme.

Suddenly, Danny’s palms are against his chest and pushing him back. Each of them gasps for their own breath, but there’s very little space between them.  
“What does this mean?” Danny asks, way too coherently for Steve’s liking.  
“I want you. I’m not supposed to, legally I’m not allowed to, and I’m pretty sure Clara would kill me if she knew how I see you when I look at you, but I want you. And if you’re going to leave next year, I have to do something about it now. But, Danno, we’ve got to be so damned careful.”  
“You mean, like no PDA,” Danny says wryly, and Steve has the decency to blush.  
“Something like that,” he mutters. “Danny. I could lose everything. But that doesn’t mean anything if I lose you first.”

Danny isn’t sure that what he’s hearing is true. He also doesn’t think he’s ever heard Steve talk quite so much, so that’s new. He always thought his crush on Steve was one sided, but now he knows it wasn’t and now he knows Steve still wants him, he doesn’t know what to do.  
“I won’t be the reason you lose it all,” he says bluntly, crossing his arms. “I can’t. We lost Matty, you can’t lose that too.”  
“You won’t,” Steve says calmly. “Your mom is happy for you to be at my place, thinks it’s good for us, so we have time to figure this out.”  
Danny knows Steve is right. Less clichéd sneaking around for them: his mom is practically handing Danny over gift-wrapped.  
“It still isn’t safe.”  
“I want this, Danny, but only if you’re all in. If you’re not, you need to tell me now, because it’s getting really hard to ignore you.”  
Danny glances down to where Steve is hard in his pants and then back up to Steve, who rolls his eyes.  
“I want you, too,” Danny acknowledges, “so I’ll take the risk. But I won’t do anything to put you in danger.”  
“Which means?”  
“No sex, not until I graduate.”  
Steve nods. That’s going to be a hard promise to keep.  
“Okay,” he agrees without much enthusiasm, but then he presses their lips together and the darkness around them disappears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you all likely know by now, I have no Beta reader (on purpose, because I'm so unreliable!), so all mistakes are mine. But if you spot something glaring, please let me know (politely!). Thanks.


	10. Clara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken a while. Work and parenting have kind of gotten in the way. I'll try to do better.

It’s Sunday, and Steve and Danny haven’t managed any alone time at all since the overlook. They’ve seen each other in passing, in class, at practice, but all of that is irrelevant really. Steve is craving time with Danny, craves the feel of him in his arms and against his mouth, the scent of his skin and . . . he is so gone! He’s not sure when he realised that this attraction he feels is love, but it is. Yet being in love with the seventeen year old brother of your dead best friend isn’t an easy thing to reconcile when you’re also trying to heal from the horrors of war and losing your family and everything else Steve feels weighing in his chest every day.

It’s a mess. But Danny is like a beacon of light in the darkness that is his post-war misery and, except for Mary and Joanie, the only thing that gets him out of bed some days. Not this morning, though, because this morning has him in bed, his hands wrapped around his heavy cock, stroking slowly but firmly to the memories of Danny’s mouth. It’s not hard for Steve to imagine Danny’s lips wrapped around him, suckling his head and stroking his balls, and Steve enjoys the fantasies while getting off. It’s over too soon and Steve lays gasping, drawing deep breaths for a few moments, his hand and stomach sticky and warm. Danny said no sex, and Steve knows how right he is to say that, because kissing gets him fired but sex gets him imprisoned, yet Steve knows how hard that’s going to be to maintain. It’s not even the end of September, and they’ve got to make it to June. Slowly, Steve stretches and heads for the bathroom. He has dinner at the Williams’ this afternoon, and he decides to break some of his own rules and take a long, hot shower.

As he lathers his skin, his thoughts drift back to Danny and the tension crackles under his skin again. The want he feels is not just sexual, he knows he loves Danny in more ways than he thought possible, but it doesn’t change the fact that Steve hasn’t had regular sex since he was military, and even then, sneaking around the base for a quick blow job with Freddie wasn’t really ‘regular’ sex. He’s horny. He rinses the lather from his skin and is embarrassed by the new erection he’s sporting. But, he figures if he has to spend a few hours with Danny but not being able to touch him or kiss him or hold him, he should probably wring as much tension from his body as possible to ensure that he can stay as relaxed as possible. Taking himself in hand again, he begins to stroke, Danny’s eyes and mouth flashing through his mind once more. As his breathing becomes more rapid, and his need stronger and deeper, Steve contorts himself a little to press a single digit into his ass, the channel tight and warm around his finger. The thought that Danny might one day have him this way sends electric shocks through his system and he’s suddenly coming, hard. Steve stumbles out of the shower, wraps a towel around his waist and slumps on the toilet, his head down to catch his breath. His hands are shaking, his pulse is racing, and his heart is aching. Nine months? He is so screwed.

Danny wakes to the noise of Bridget yelling. He’s not sure at who or why, can’t really make out the words, of even if it’s angry yelling or excited yelling. He buries his head under his pillow and tries to drown her out, along with the screaming in his own brain. Despite having seen Steve on and off for a few days, he misses him. And dinner today is going to be hell. Watching Steve interact with his family when what they’re doing could cause them all to implode? Not fun. He groans and rolls over, grabbing his phone from the nightstand.

 **DANNY** : What are you doing?

He waits a while for a response, but nothing comes. Another five minutes and he’s beginning to worry that Steve is ignoring him, or avoiding him. Just as he’s about to give up hope and let panic truly set in, his phone vibrates in his hand.

 **STEVE M** : Honest answer, or an easy lie?

Danny swallows around a sudden lump in his throat.

 **DANNY** : Always the truth

He waits and Steve’s answer takes a while to come through. He wonders if he’s editing his truth and hopes to god that’s not the case.

 **STEVE M** : I was jacking off to thoughts of you in the shower. Recovery took a while.

Danny’s eyes go wide and he drops the phone like he’s been scalded. He fleetingly wonders what the easy lie would have been: swimming, maybe? But then he’s hard himself and the throbbing of his heartbeat in his penis is hard to ignore. He can see Steve—tall and muscular Steve—standing under the water, thick forearm almost a blur as he brings himself to orgasm. The groan he releases this time is sexually frustrated rather than just frustrated.

 **DANNY** : Thanks for that visual.

It’s the only response he can give. He wonders what Steve was thinking when he sent that. If someone saw his phone, they’d both be in the shit. Equally, Danny admires that he hadn’t lied. Trust was a big thing for Steve and the fact that he trusted Danny with this little nugget of information is a big deal.

 **DANNY** : I’m not looking forward to family dinner. I’m going to want to kiss you the whole time.  
 **STEVE M** : Me too, babe, but we’ll make it work. See you soon.

Danny rolls out of bed. The thought of dinner had settled his dick and he knew his erection wouldn’t be willed back any time soon. Shame. An orgasm would have started out the day a little better. Shrugging into sweat pants and a loose t shirt (he’d dress better later), he went looking for breakfast.

His mom is in the kitchen, humming to something on the radio and swaying as she cooks up blueberry pancakes. She's in a good mood – pancakes were a rarity in the mornings since Clara didn’t always sleep as well as she used to.  
“Hey, sweetie!” she says, turning to slide a plate of pancakes in front of him. “You okay?”  
“Sure, hungry and tired. Was too warm to sleep last night.”  
“Why didn’t you go for a run, like usual?”  
Danny pauses mid-bite. He hadn’t realised his mom even knew he went out that late.  
“Are you mad?” he asks.  
“I trust you to be safe. And I know you can look after yourself,” she says, with an eye-brow raise which reminds him of the fights he got into a couple years ago when he was finding his feet in the world. “But I feel even better about it since you started going out with Steve.” She turns back to the stove, but Danny is struggling to swallow the mouthful of pancake he has. She knows about that too? Does she know _everything_? “It’s okay, Danny, I’m glad. I don’t know how it happened, but maybe you both need a friend right now. He seems sad and I worry.”  
“He’s my teacher, Ma,” Danny says, inadvertently falling back to his childhood name for her. She turns back and smiles once again, wistfully this time. “It’s not like you’re making out with each other,” she chides, and Danny knows he flushes bright red. “You’re looking after each other, and that’s different. Besides, I’m not going to say anything to the school. Are you?”  
“About what? He’s Matty’s best friend. Everyone knows that. It’s not a secret or anything.” He ducks his head and wills the conversation away. His mom falls silent and he finishes eating.

Meanwhile, Danny’s thoughts continue to race. His mom sees way too much and knows way too much. Of course she knew he and Steve were running together. She doesn’t sleep well just like him, and she probably looked outside when she heard voices. Maybe she even heard him leaving? How would they get through three hours of dinner without her seeing the ‘more’ that there was between them now? Internally, he groaned and reached for the coffee. What was already going to be a long day was about to get much, much longer. He was tempted to message Steve, warn him, but maybe that would just make him more anxious? Or would it make him less anxious as there were less things to hide? Danny’s frustration grew. Can he really manage months of this, maybe more than a year?

In the end, he caves and picks up the phone. Hiding away in his room, tucked down the side of his bed with his knees to his chest, he presses the green call button below Steve’s name. They haven’t called before and he hopes it doesn’t worry Steve too much.  
“Danno?”  
“Hey, babe,” Danny says quietly, trying not to draw attention to being on the phone.  
“Everything okay?”  
“Sure.” He pauses and sucks in a breath. “And, maybe no. My mom knows we’ve been running together.”  
“Shit.” Steve’s curse word comes before Danny can say anything else and he chuckles softly at the impatience.  
“It’s okay. She thinks it’s a good thing. You can keep me safer and she’s worried about you. She thinks we’re good for each other, if you can believe that. She said it wasn’t like we were making out or anything, and we both needed a friend.”  
“Shit.”  
Danny smiles again. He had to sit through this first hand and is enjoying it far more the second time around. “Was I wrong to tell you?”  
“God, no. At least I won’t get caught out if she mentions the running, and I’ve time to come up with something plausible if she asks about it. But maybe…” Steve’s voice trails off into silence.  
“Maybe what?”  
“Maybe she’d be okay, with us being an ‘us’ I mean. She seems to think spending time together is good for both of us.”  
Danny is shaking his head before Steve finishes speaking. “No, man. She thinks you’re replacing Matty. What we have is totally different, isn’t it?”  
“I’m hardly thinking brotherly thoughts about you,” Steve scoffs.  
“So we have to keep this from her. Don’t sit near me, talk to everyone before me, and just keep some distance when you’re here.”  
“That won’t work, babe,” Steve says softly, “because she knows we spend time together. Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay. I promise.”  
Danny wants to believe him but he’s not sure he can. Steve’s voice is calm though, and deliciously rich, and it sends shivers through him and deep into his belly.  
“I could sit here and talk to you all day,” he says, quietly though, like some form of confession, and he rests his forehead on his knees.  
“I would love that,” Steve replies, almost as softly, "but I’d rather have you here, near me. Do you think Clara would let you come here before dinner?”  
Danny sucks in a breath. If he goes, and he’s almost certain his mom will let him, he’s not sure how they will look when they come back, because if they’ve been making out he knows he’s going to find it hard to hide. But he wants to go so much. To be with Steve.  
“Danno?” Steve’s voice is barely a whisper.  
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”


	11. Dinner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two in one day! It's my way of apologising for the wait.  
> I have literally rattled this off in the last hour and a half, so I will apologise now for the litany of errors. Maybe I'll go through and looks for them later, but if you see anything super obvious, please let me know. Otherwise, enjoy!

As Danny suspected, Clara is pleased he is going to see Steve, and even sends him with some extra pancakes. She reminds him they need to be back at the house for dinner at three and waves him off. The guilt Danny harbours is like a hot flash in his gut—it’s not the first time he’s lied to her, but now he knows it definitely won’t be the last. Maybe Steve is right, and she might not mind the truth. He’s pretty sure his Dad would though. He never thought that these were the sort of thoughts he’d be having as a seventeen year old kid. He once imagined high school to be a flurry of fast loves and discovery, though he realised around a year ago that it wasn’t likely now. He’d given his heart freely in love of his brother, and it got burned so bad he’d built up a few walls. Sure, he’s kissed a few people, but no one had ever felt the way Steve did. Even now, as he walks along the sidewalk (trying not to rush and seem over-eager) he remembers the feel and taste of Steve. As soon as Steve’s front door appears ahead of him, he feels his heart quicken and his whole body trembles slightly. Time alone with the man he is suddenly and overwhelmingly in both love and lust with? He can’t wait.

Steve opens the door and Danny steps in, toeing off his shoes and tucking them under the side table in the hallway. He smiles shyly at Steve, who gestures for the front room before closing—and locking—the door. Danny steps into the room, and notices drinks and snacks out on the table, a game playing on the television.  
“Thought we could hang out, watch the game,” Steve says, and Danny notices a slight blush on Steve’s cheekbones, which makes him smile despite himself.  
“Thought you’d be wanting to make out,” Danny says with a shrug and grin.  
“I didn’t want to presume,” Steve says, his voice suddenly pitched low.  
“After that message this morning, how you could possibly think I’d want anything else is an absolute mystery. Presume, Steve, always presume!” Danny realises he’s ranting and shuts up suddenly, but Steve’s gaze is hot on his face. Slowly, Steve closes the space between them and cups Danny’s face with his warm palms.   
“I’ve missed you,” he breathes into Danny’s mouth before pressing their lips together.

Danny’s eyes are closed, because the feel and taste of Steve all around him is already overwhelming, and adding the visual to it is too much. He wraps his arms around Steve’s waist, and opens his mouth to receive Steve, feels the slide of their tongues over each other and the pressure of Steve’s hands on his face. He is growing breathless, struggling to focus on anything except Steve and suddenly he feels as though he’s flying. He never wants anything more than this. Never.

Drawing back, Steve gasps for breath and he huffs out a soft laugh.  
“That was…” But he can’t find the words. Danny stands before him, their chests barely touching, Danny’s hands at his waist, and Steve wants to devour and take and have. “Sorry. I need a minute.” He steps back further, drawing away from Danny and squeezing his fists together while he fights the urge to do that all over again.  
“Do you want me to go?” Danny asks. His mouth is flushed, spit-slick, and Steve has to drag his eyes away.  
“No. Definitely not. But you want to wait and I am finding that a little hard right now.”  
“Or a lot hard,” Danny says with a wry grin and a glance at the tent in Steve’s shorts. It's the right thing to say though, because suddenly the tension evaporates and both men are smiling. “So, the game?” Danny asks, turning and heading for the couch. He takes a seat and grabs a can of soda, popping the ring pull and drawing a deep drink. Steve is pretty certain that Danny has no idea what he’s doing right now, but Steve needs to take another deep breath before he can move closer. He can do this. He can be a gentleman. Even if he’s going to end up with repetitive strain injury in this wrist.

The game is a re-run, and they’ve both seen it before, so they end up talking about everything and anything. Danny talks about his teachers and makes Steve laugh until he’s almost crying, commenting that he’ll never be able to go into the teachers’ lounge again. Steve tells Danny stories from life on base, and shares memories of Matt making an idiot of himself in different countries. Steve confesses to Danny about his relationship with Freddie, though he acknowledges it wasn’t really a relationship, and that he didn’t really feel anything when Freddie got married.  
“All I thought when he told me was what I might feel when you got married one day,” he says softly, staring into Danny’s brilliant blue eyes, “and how I was going to have to hide how awful it would be for me. But it was wrong too, Danny, to think of you like that when you were barely thirteen. I still have an issue with it, with the way I felt about you then, even if Matty said he thought it would be okay when you were older. Matt said you had an old soul."  
Danny puts a gentle hand on Steve’s knee to settle him, and changes the subject abruptly. He tells Steve about Bridget’s crush on him, and he has the decency to blush and agree to make an effort to deter her.

Before they know it, three hours have passed, and they’ll have to head back to Danny’s house soon.  
“Are you ready for this?” Danny asks.  
“I’ve missed dinner at your house, Danny. It would be nice not to get punched when I arrive for this one, though,” he adds, with a cheeky grin.  
“I apologised for that already!” Danny says, exasperated and throwing his hands wildly in the air. Steve captures his wrists with one hand, and then captures Danny’s mouth with his own. He feels Danny’s grin against his own mouth, before he pushes up a little and lays Steve backwards on the couch, climbing clumsily into Steve’s lap. Danny pauses a minute, waits for Steve to object, but when he meets no resistance he settles his weight into Steve’s lap. His ass is cradled perfectly, and he leans forward to press their lips together again. This time, it’s Danny who holds Steve’s face reverently between his palms, and Steve rests his hands on Danny’s hips, holding him firm.

Danny’s mouth explores Steve’s, and Steve lays back and accepts the journey. Danny trails his fingers up into Steve’s hair, threading through the strands and tugging slightly to change the angle of Steve’s head to deepen the kiss. Breathlessly, they tangle their tongues together and gasp into each other’s mouths, before Danny slowly begins to nibble wet kisses along Steve’s jaw and down the cords in Steve’s strained neck. Danny can feel Steve’s thick cock nestled in the crack of his ass, and he’s pretty sure it feels as good for Steve as it does for him.

Danny presses kisses to Steve’s collar bone, bites gently into the muscle just below when he tugs the tee shirt out of the way a little, and feels the rumble of Steve’s groan.  
“Danno, you’re killing me,” Steve moans, his voice low and thick.  
“Use me,” Danny whispers into Steve’s skin.  
“What?” Steve asks, trying to push Danny away.  
“Not like that,” Danny smirks before he licks a line up Steve’s throat to his ear lobe. He sucks the lobe into his mouth, before whispering once more, this time into Steve’s ear. “Get your horny teenager on.” He presses back into Steve’s cock, rubbing forwards and backwards a couple of times and then pressing his palms to the back of Steve’s hands. “I want to see you come.”  
“Fuck!” It’s the only thing Steve can think to say, the only word his lust-driven brain can come up with. There are so many parts of him that know how wrong it is; parts that are pretty certain he’d get fired for this too, if the school board found out. It might not be penetration, but if he comes it’s still sex. “We can’t, Danno, you said it yourself. You want to wait. To protect my job. To protect me.”  
Danny sits up immediately, pressing harder onto Steve’s cock in the process. Steve groans and drags Danny forward and back a little before he stops himself again.  
“I’m sorry, Steve,” Danny says, staring deeply into Steve’s eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about it. You told me…and I…I want you. I want sex, with you. But we can’t, of course you’re right we can’t, but it doesn’t change anything. I want to see you come. I want to be the reason that you do. And I want you to feel me on top of you every time you get hard. I want. I want so badly. Please, let me be this for you, right now. No-one will ever know, because there’s just us here. Please,” Danny gasps, and he grinds himself over Steve’s cock again.  
“Danny.” The name slips from Steve’s mouth like a prayer and Danny’s head falls to Steve’s chest. Steve presses kisses to the top of his head and tries to slow his own breathing. He’s the adult here, as much as it pains him to think it because he doesn’t see Danny as a child, but one of them has to make the right decisions—for both of them.  
“I don’t want things to be like that with us, babe. I want you, my god do I want you,” he chuckles, “But when you get to watch me come, I want that to be because we are as close together as we can be. I want it to be because you are buried so deeply inside me that I can’t think about anything else, that all I can feel is you, or because you surround me completely. Danny, Danno,” Steve says, lifting Danny’s face to his and pressing gentle kisses along his cheekbones, his eyes. “I love you too much for our first time to be like this.” Then, he presses his lips to Danny’ softly, and Danny gasps into the kiss. Steve turns them slowly, until they lie next to each other on the couch, Danny pressed into the back. Steve worships Danny’s mouth, making it clear as day that he means every word. Danny is surrounded by Steve, the taste and smell of him, and he knows that Steve is right.  
“I’m sorry,” he gasps, “I’m sorry.”  
“Don’t apologise,” Steve replies, their foreheads pressed together. “You did nothing wrong.”  
Steve can see that Danny doesn’t believe him, yet, but he will. Steve will make sure he knows there’s nothing to be sorry for. But right now, they have to get ready to go for dinner.

Steve steps through the front door of the Williams’ house and is assaulted by noise and chaos. Clara appears in the doorway of the kitchen and greets him with a beaming smile. Eddie Williams rises off the sofa and clasps his hand, shaking it and telling him how great it is to see him. Little Bridget makes heart eyes at him—that he now can’t not notice, thank you very much, Danny—and Stella is curled up in the armchair, phone in hand and barely acknowledging him. It feels like home and he breathes it in alongside the scent of dinner. He waits for the guilt to settle in him, the guilt that what he has with Danny could tear this all apart, but it never comes. He feels safe here, nestled in the heart of the Williams’ family, and he can’t bring himself to regret anything right now. He winks at Danny who rolls his eyes and heads off to set the table. Steve follows, and props a hip against the counter to watch both Danny and Clara as they make preparations.  
“How can I help?” he asks, knowing that Clara will shoo him away anyway.  
“Nothing to do, Stevie, it’ll only be a few minutes anyway.”  
And so Steve watches, and listens, and breathes. And feels safe.

Raucous laughter at dinner was something Steve took a long time to get used to. Dinners in his house were quiet, frequently solitary affairs that fed the stomach but not the soul. He feels doubly nourished here. Eddie is in the middle of telling a story about little Danny that Steve has heard a dozen times before, but he loves it. He loves how Danny’s ears turn pink, the flush of embarrassment on his cheeks and neck, and he finds his mind wondering how much further that blush extends.  
“When he then handed the diaper to the sales lady, we couldn’t hardly breathe for laughing!” Eddie finishes the story, and Steve laughs along with the family. He used to be able to clearly see the images of little Danny in his head, but now all he can see is the embarrassed Danny who is trying not to laugh too much. Steve’s mouth goes dry and he reaches for the bottle of beer Eddie had given him to try and find his words.  
“So, how’s work going, Steve?” asks Clara.  
“Good, thanks. The team are good this year, might be in with a chance of a win. And classes are good. I think maybe I’ve found where I belong.” Steve knows that Danny gets it, that he doesn’t just mean work, and he feels Danny’s gaze on his face. “And I love being back on the island. Seeing Mary and Joanie more is good. And you guys, of course. I miss this house.” He feels his face flush a little.  
“You are always welcome here,” Clara says, patting his hand, “Anytime. Always. Isn’t that right, Eddie?”  
“Of course. What Clara says, goes,” Eddie laughs. Danny, who is seated opposite Steve, presses his foot to Steve’s and Steve knows he is worried. Will Steve lose everything if their secret is discovered? Steve has to believe no. He has to believe that, while the family will likely be shocked and angry, that they will see how much he loves Danny and probably has for a long time. Has to believe that one day they will forgive him and welcome him home.

Dinner draws to a close, and Clara refuses to let Steve help with dishes, instead sending him and Danny out on to the small lanai at the back of the house. It feels odd, almost like Clara wants them to be more, but maybe he’s just reading in to things. He and Danny sit on the step, close enough to feel the heat of each other without actually touching.  
“That was nice,” Steve says. Danny just hums a response and continues to stare across the small yard. “You okay?”  
“I don’t know.”  
Steve waits but Danny doesn’t give him anything else. “If this is about earlier-” he starts.  
“It’s not, at least not entirely.” Danny clams up again, but Steve knows he can wait him out this time. He’s trying to sort out his thoughts, his feelings, and Steve understands.  
“I guess. I just.” Danny grunts in frustration then takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to be the reason you lose everything.”  
Steve nods. He feels the same, a little bit, but about himself and not Danny. However, there is something bigger and better that Danny has not considered.  
“Danny, if I have you, I already have everything I could want.”  
Danny coughs and glares at Steve. “You can’t say stuff like that. That’s too much for me to carry. I’m just a kid.”  
“You are not a kid, Danno, not be any means. But you won’t be the reason. The only person who can destroy this is me. I’ll protect us, Danny. I don’t know how, but I will. Can you trust me to look after you?”  
“I can. Yes, I can, but—”  
“What are you two whispering about?” Bridget appears beside them and squeezes herself down next to Steve, on the opposite side to Danny.  
“I was telling Danny all about how we’re going to win the next football game and he was trying to tell me I was wrong,” Steve says with a smile. Danny nudges him in the side sharply, and Steve gets the message. Don’t tease the kid with a crush.  
“Danny always thinks things will go wrong, or that we’ll lose, or that he’ll come last. He’s grumpy that way.”  
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Steve says.  
“Oh it is. When he joined the team he said they’d probably lose now he was on it. He always says he’s going to flunk a test, thinks he’ll lose when we play a game. When he broke up with Sam last year, he said it was always going to happen. See. Grumpy.” Bridget has checked off each comment on her fingers, and Danny feels crushing despair start to creep in. His vision clouds, sparkles appear at the centre, and his breathing begins to race.  
“Bridget, do you know why Danny feels like that?” Steve asks, and Danny fights back the panic as Steve continues to face Bridget. She shakes her head. “It’s because he cares a lot, about everyone, including you. When you don’t want to disappoint people, that’s hard, isn’t it?” Steve is still looking at her, but he can feel the change in Danny behind him. The short, gasping breaths are lengthening again. “Don’t you think we’re lucky to have someone who cares so much about us all, hmm?” Bridget looks thoughtfully at Steve before nodding.  
“Sure, I guess.”  
“Do you love your brother, Bridget?”  
“Twice as much now, because he got all the love I had for Matt as well.” Bridget says it so matter-of-fact that Steve feels a huge lump suddenly appear in his throat. “Do you love him, Steve?” she asks.  
“Of course,” Steve’s reply is a fast breath, “I love you all. But maybe, if Danny sounds like he’s being all negative about things, you could remind him that you love him and see if that helps?”  
“Okay, Steve,” Bridget says. She stands up, hugs them both, and then darts back in to the house, gone as quickly as she had appeared.

Steve turns to Danny who smiles back, tears in the corner of his eyes.  
“Thank you,” Danny says. Steve just nods.


	12. Reality check?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god did I love writing this.  
> I just hope you enjoy reading it as much!  
> FYI - there is some fairly explicit stuff towards the end, though nowhere near as explicit as I expect this story to get, but I wanted to warn. If you want to avoid it, don't read beyond: 'There is no lightbulb . . .'
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy!

All the way to work on Monday, Steve feels weird but he doesn’t know why. He can’t put his finger on the feeling but he knows he likes it. It’s a lightness in him, a tingling about the edges, and it’s only when he arrives at the school that he realises it’s happiness. Like, _real_ happiness. He draws in a deep breath and allows himself to revel in the feeling of being happy. Had he really forgotten what it was like to feel this way? He knows questions like that will make him less happy very quickly, so he discards the thought for now.

As he walks through the corridors towards his classroom, he sees Danny’s blonde head through the crowds. He's next to his locker, head together with Grace and whispering. But he has no reason to worry – Danny won’t say anything to Grace and put him in danger. But he is jealous. Just a little, but he is. He wants to stand close to Danny and whisper into his ear. Shit! If he keeps thinking that way he’s going to get hard and that’s the last thing he needs. Danny turns just before Steve disappears into his classroom and their eyes meet for a fleeting second. It’s almost too much and not enough at the same time. Maybe Danny can come over and do homework after practice? Steve ducks through his door and tries to focus on morning prep, rather than fantasies of Danny’s tongue in his mouth.

“Hello! Danny?” Grace is waving her hand in front of Danny’s face and then she turns to see what’s caught his eye but there’s nothing there. Danny smiles at her and shoves another book in his locker. “You didn’t reply to my messages all weekend. Where were you?” Grace sounds pouty and there is nothing Danny would like more than to tell her the whole truth even though he’s not sure she would believe him. Instead, he settles for part of it.  
“Steve came for dinner so I had to leave my phone in my room. You know my mom.” He even added a self-deprecating shrug for effect.  
“Steve? You mean Coach McGarrett?”  
“Yeah, well, you know it’d be weird for me to call him that. He was Matt’s friend, he practically lived with us when I was little.”  
“I know. But doesn’t he want you to call him coach?” This time, Grace adds a lascivious wink, and Danny blushes suddenly and hotly. “Oh my god!” Grace gasps, “Does he want you to call him coach?”  
“Of course not!” Danny blusters. “You know I had a crush on him. It’s weird when you say things like that.”  
“Do you still want him, Danny?” Grace teases, pulling a stupid teenage-girl face.  
“Yes, all right? I do want him. He’s hot. Come on, you can’t tell me you haven’t thought that too!”  
“Oh, he’s hot. But is he straight?” she ponders, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth and staring into the distance as though imagining Steve choosing between the two of them. Danny doesn’t enjoy her ogling Steve, in person or in her mind, but there’s little he can do about it. Instead, he shoves her elbow and rolls his eyes.  
“Come on, class awaits,” he says, trying to joke away the uncomfortable feeling in his chest. As they turn, his phone vibrates and he finds a message.  
 **STEVE M** : Miss you. See you soon babe x  
Danny shivers again and stuffs the phone deep in his pocket. He has no real idea how he’s going to pretend everything is normal while he’s in class—but he’s going to have to if he’s going to keep Grace from prying.

The morning seems to drag for both of them, but especially Steve, who struggles to concentrate on anything when he knows that Danny will be in his classroom soon. His mind drifts frequently and he loses his train of thought often enough in first period that one of the kids calls him on it. He works harder to get it right then, and makes it to Danny’s class with fewer issues.

However, when Danny walks into his classroom he realises his problems are only just beginning. The shirt Danny is wearing pulls tightly across his shoulders and is an ocean blue, which makes his sun-bronzed skin glow and his eyes brighter than usual. Steve glances at him briefly along with the other students as they enter his class, but then he almost does a double take. This close, as Danny walks by, he can smell Danny’s soap scent and it stirs something in his gut.

When this all started, Steve never really thought through what it would be like to ignore Danno and teach Danny, alongside his peers, for an hour every day. For another six plus months. The happiness that Steve had bathed in earlier becomes anxiety to wallow in. His heart feels suddenly heavy. Steve cannot have what he wants, in the way that he wants it, and it’s going to be even more difficult because work isn’t an escape from it. What the hell was he thinking? Why did he think he could be happy? He glances over at Danny again, who is watching him warily. Steve knows that the gamut of emotions that are currently coursing through him are clearly visible on his face. He swallows, shakes his head and drags up a smile from somewhere in order to start the lesson. But the whole time, a pessimistic voice which sounds a lot like his Danno is whispering to him that he can’t do it.

Danny sees Steve’s expression change, sees the way his shoulders fall and his face grows pale. He’s pretty sure he knows the cause too. When he walked in to class he fought down the urge to lock lips with Steve like an addict tries to bite down a craving. He was failing, and he knew that Steve had seen his failure. Danny’s heart aches for Steve, who valiantly tries to get through the lesson input so the class can get on with independent practice, but his soul’s not in it. Eventually, Steve sets them off on a task. Danny waits what he deems to be a reasonable amount of time and raises his hand for Steve’s help. To his credit, Steve acknowledges him and heads straight over from Destiny’s desk where he’d been coaching her. Steve drops down in front of Danny’s table, just like he had with Destiny, but this time when he looks up it’s straight into Danny’s penetrating stare. Danny watches Steve’s anxious swallow.  
“How can I help?” he asks quietly. The rest of the class are talking quietly amongst themselves, a low thrum around the room that does just enough to drown out a very quiet conversation—or at least Danny hopes so.  
“Are you okay?” he asks, his hand twitching to reach out and touch.  
“With the work?” Steve all but pleads. Danny shakes his head minutely, and Steve draws in a deep breath. “It’s harder than I thought it would be, because I’m an idiot and naïve. But it will be okay,” he continues. “I promised you I’d look after you, after us, and I will.”  
“Just need to acclimatise to the new normal,” Danny whispers back. Steve looks up at him, a question in his eyes. “Something my mom used to say, after Matt.” Danny lifts his shoulders in a slight shrug and Steve’s heart aches again sending a jolt of want and need and sorrow through him all at once. He looks around the room and, when he’s certain everyone else is focused, he leans forward ever so slightly and places his hand on Danny’s.  
“Nothing’s changed,” he says, before he stands and heads back to his desk. Danny shudders at the barely there contact and immediately misses it when it’s gone. He looks around and realises with something akin to horror that Grace is watching him. Her face is a picture book, with anger and worry written across the lines of her forehead. He’s going to have to answer to her over lunch, and he spends the remainder of the session figuring out what story to tell.

“What the fuck was that?” she hisses the minute they leave the classroom.  
“Was what?” Danny tries, deciding to go with Plan A of ignorance and denial to begin with.  
“Don’t you lie to me Daniel Williams,” she demands, her voice cold but her eyes warm. “Coach touched you in there.” Danny’s mind flits back to the weekend and the amount of touching she knows nothing about, but he shoves the thoughts away.  
“You’ve seen him touch me before, when I had my panic attack like just last week.”  
“This was different. For a start, you weren’t fucking panicking.”  
Danny is royally screwed because Grace simply knows him too well. But he refuses to say anything else, clamming up entirely, because lying by omission is much easier than lying to her face. She stares at him, each facing the other in the corridor, before she draws a shaky breath and he sees the anger drain from her body. “Fine. You don’t want to tell me what, if anything, is going on. But Danny, if there is you need to promise me you'll be really careful. He’s a lot older, he’s a teacher, he’s like a son to your parents and, honestly, you aren’t known for your amazing life choices.”  
“Tell me about it,” he sniffs, “Look who I picked for a best friend.” Then he grins at her and she shakes her head.  
“Promise me,” she repeats, grabbing his hand.  
“I promise to look after myself and only make choices that are right for me,” he says solemnly, adding ‘and for Steve’ in his head. She nods again and links their fingers together, leading them to the cafeteria. So Danny simply accepts that she thinks she knows something, and that he will have to be really careful in more ways than one.

It’s well after dinner when Clara calls up the stairs.  
“Danny, there’s someone here to see you!” She sounds delighted, which probably mean Grace called round on her way back from swim practice or judo or whatever else sport she’s doing today (seriously, how she fits in all the extra-curriculars and maintains her GPA is a mystery to Danny). He doesn’t bother putting on a shirt—it’s been way too warm in his room so he’s only wearing gym shorts. When he gets to the bottom of the stairs, Steve is leaning against the living room doorway chatting with Danny’s dad, and Danny is stunned. What is he doing here?  
“Daniel, you could have got dressed at least!” Clara says, exasperated. “Steve said you left a book in class you would need for your homework, so he dropped it by. That’s nice of him,” she says, “Nice of you,” she continues but to Steve this time. “Say thank you, Daniel,” she demands, wide-eyed, before batting him with the dish towel.  
“My god, calm down, Ma! Thank you, Steve, for bringing by my book.” He takes the battered text book which Steve proffers, though it has absolutely nothing to do with the classroom learning.  
“Would you like a drink, Stevie?” his mom asks. Steve is clearly torn—maybe his dazzlingly clever plan didn’t extend this far. “Or do you need to be going?” she asks.  
“Actually, I thought I’d see if Danno needed any help with the homework. I’m at a bit of a loose end this evening as Mary’s taken Joanie to see Aunt Deb in LA for a couple of weeks.” Steve stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans and looks down a little, suitably adult while clearly sulking. Clara laughs and swats him with the towel.  
“Get yourselves upstairs. I’ll bring you some chips and soda. If Danny’s done the homework, maybe you can watch a movie? I’m sure Danny won’t mind keeping you company for a bit.” And she shoos them upstairs once Steve has kicked off his slippahs.

“What are you doing here?” Danny asks as he steps through his bedroom door. Steve doesn’t answer, just closes the door and grabs Danny’s wrist. Tugging him back gently until he’s flat against the same door, Steve looms over him and grins predatorily.  
“I couldn’t wait a minute longer,” he almost groans before he begins to devour Danny’s mouth. Danny just opens up and let’s Steve map his mouth with his tongue. Mere moments later, they hear footsteps on the stairs and Steve steps away, striding over to the window to look out over the landscape and try to catch his breath. Danny opens the door just as him mom gets to it, and she shuffles in with a tray laden with snacks and drinks—enough for a small army!  
“Thanks, Ma, but isn’t there's only two of us!"  
Clara looks between them both for a moment, her eyes suddenly sharp and her mouth drawn taut. She looks back and forth between them and Danny quickly grows uncomfortable. It’s a few short moments of weird silence, and then she’s patting him on the shoulder.  
“I just want you to be happy,” she says with a soft but reluctant smile, “Both of you. There’s no rush tonight, Steve. I know it’s school tomorrow, but neither of you sleep very well and I’d rather you were sitting in here than running about God knows where. Mind, I don’t sleep well either,” she says somewhat pointedly, before stepping out of the room. “See you in the morning,” she calls back.

“That was weird,” Danny mutters, closing the door behind his mom.  
“Oh, she knows.” Steve’s voice is matter-of-fact but a little distant.  
“The fuck she does!” Danny gasps. “You’d be out of here in seconds if they found out.”  
“I didn’t say them, Danno, I said _she_ knows. Your Dad hasn’t a clue.”  
Danny takes a few seconds to process. “How does she know?”  
Steve looks over from the window and smiles sadly. “Because it’s written all over my face? Because it’s written all over yours? Because any idiot can see we were just kissing.”  
“Not my dad, apparently,” Danny mutters, and Steve huffs a soft, warm laugh.  
“Come here,” he says, reaching out for Danny who walks over to him. They wrap their arms around each other, Danny pressing his cheek into Steve’s chest, just above his heart.  
“Why didn’t she do anything? Say anything?”  
“Maybe she doesn’t know for sure, because we’ve not said anything. Honestly, babe, I don’t think she cares. Like she said, she just wants us to be happy.”  
They stand for long minutes breathing in each other and contemplating what just happened before Danny speaks up once more, drawing back to see Steve’s reaction to what he has to say.  
“Grace sort of knows, too. Like mom, so thinks she knows.”  
“But you didn’t say anything, did you?”  
“No. But she saw you in class, today.”  
“Shit.”  
More long minutes pass. Steve’s eyes rove over Danny’s face, and Danny’s pay him the same attention, as if memorising each other in case this is the last moment they have together.  
“So, your mom and best friend know. What does it say about me that I have no-one to notice anything about me?”  
Danny sees then just how sad Steve is today. It’s like his chest is heavier than the rest of him, and so he’s a little hunched over. There are grey shadows under his eyes.  
“I was happy this morning. Until I saw you in class. I realised…” He takes a shaky breath and presses a soft kiss to Danny’s forehead. “I realised I am going to find it really hard to avoid how I feel about you when we’re in class. But tonight, while I was eating dinner alone, I realised just how worth it it’s going to be.”  
“And with my mom practically inviting you for sleep overs, well that’s sure to make things so much easier.” Danny grins.  
“I’m not going to stay here tonight,” Steve replies, pressing more kisses to Danny’s face and neck and ear lobe. “Because if I did, I have no idea how I could keep my hands off you.” And then Steve’s tongue is back in Danny’s mouth and Danny forgets about anything or anyone beyond Steve, and Steve’s hands and Steve’s tongue.

Two hours later, propped up on the floor against the bed and laughing at a dreadful coming of age comedy, Steve realises that the happy feeling is back. Mr Williams had called in a half hour before and asked how long Steve was planning on staying, because Clara had said he might stay over and did he need to get pillows or blankets or the air bed out? Danny smiled at the innocence of his dad, but also found their willingness to just accept Steve's presence ultimately reassuring. When they were able to properly come out as being together, maybe everyone would accept it more easily than he had thought. Steve had thanked him but said he’d be heading home after the movie. Eddie had shrugged, told him he was welcome anytime, and just left.

As the credits begin to roll and the room grows darker, Danny takes a chance and kneels up, straddling Steve and sitting in his lap. He begins to place gentle kisses on Steve’s cheekbones, his eyelids, his neck, his ear lobe. His hands run up and down Steve’s chest, and he moans softly at the feel of Steve swelling and hardening beneath him.  
“Is this okay?” he breathes, “or do you need me to move?”  
“It is more than okay, babe. I love the feel of you in my lap. Honestly, it’s good fuel for my imagination."  
“I don’t want to be a cock tease.” Danny nibbles along Steve’s jaw before kissing him again, close mouthed and tender.  
“You aren’t a cock tease. You’re fucking hot, and a serious test of my self-control, but not a tease.” Steve’s hands stroke feather-light down Danny’s sides: Danny shivers and groans once again.  
“I can’t wait,” he admits, the words barely a whisper in the darkness. “It’s not fair to ask you to wait, and I know why we said it and what we agreed and I am also fully aware that it was barely a week ago, but I have never wanted anyone the way I want you, Steve. If…if we can’t be together completely, then I don’t want to be together. Because you could find someone else who can give you everything you need.”  
Steve looks up into Danny’s eyes and sees the tears threatening to spill down his cheeks. He reaches up carefully, and swipes a fat thumb under one eye, gathering the tear and pressing it to his own lips.  
“Babe, Danno, my Danno. I don’t want anyone else. Literally. Ever. I can wait for you.”  
“But I don’t want to!” Danny gasps again, plunging his tongue back in to Steve’s mouth.

There is no lightbulb realisation. No agreement. Danny is right, and Steve knows it, he feels it in his very bones. He can no more wait to take Danny in every conceivable way than Danny can wait.  
“Not here,” he whispers into Danny’s open mouth. “Not with your parents just two doors away.”  
“I don’t want to wait,” Danny sobs, so turned on but also so filled with long-suppressed desire that he is almost overwhelmed. He is shaking, tears falling softly, and his hands clutching desperately to Steve’s as he wrestles to control himself somehow.  
“Shhh, babe, shh.” Steve presses soft kisses to Danny’s cheeks, gently lapping at the tears. “I love you. I love you,” he says between kisses. Carefully, Steve reaches between them and frees Danny’s hard cock from the confines of his shorts. “I’ve got you,” he continues, kissing and nibbling again. “I’ve got you.”

Slowly, he begins to stroke Danny’s cock. It’s a barely there movement at first, and Steve revels in the feel of the flesh throbbing hotly in his hand. He maps out every vein with each stroke, changes the grip minutely and measures the changes in Danny’s reactions: his breathing, his gasps and moans, how he writhes back against Steve’s own hard dick. Steve licks in to Danny’s mouth to stifle the moans and gasps each twist of his wrist produces, pausing only to lick his own hand to smooth the glide along Danny’s cock once more. Slowly, slowly, he builds the pressure and the speed, bringing Danny ever closer to the edge. He’s impressed with Danny’s control, at how he hasn’t come fast and dirty, but has allowed himself to be brought right to the edge. Steve draws back and sees Danny’s face twisted with pain and pleasure, struggling to control his orgasm because he is both desperate to come and desperate for this to go on forever. Steve’s own cock twitches angrily where it is trapped in his jeans beneath Danny’s writhing ass. He won’t take him here, just like he said he wouldn’t. But he will take Danny over the edge. Just one more step further, he thinks. Leaning up, he whispers gently into his Danno’s ear: “Come for me.”

Danny gasps and locks his mouth back on to Steve’s as his orgasm crashes through him and spurts out all over his shirt and Steve’s hand. The sensation continues like waves throughout him as Steve continues to stroke, hot come in streaks down his fingers. Danny can hardly breathe and his fingertips go numb.  
“So gorgeous,” Steve whispers into his ear. In the near-total darkness of Danny’s bedroom, each takes a moment to recognise the line they just crossed.  
“No going back now,” Danny says into Steve’s neck.  
How right he is.

After another few minutes, Danny slides off Steve’s lap and glances at his crotch. Steve’s cock, half hard now, has received zero attention, and Danny reaches towards Steve’s fly in order to rectify the situation.  
“No,” Steve says, catching Danny’s wrist in a circle of fingers. “I said not here.”  
“I can get you off quick,” Danny says.  
“No. I said I wanted our first time to be for us, with you balls deep in my ass.”  
“Then what was this?” Danny asks, horrified that he has ruined Steve’s plans.  
“A warm up. Your stamina is incredible for a teenager, Danno, and I plan to make good use of it.”


	13. Sickness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I seem to be aiming, without intention, to hit all of my favourite tropes! And this time it's sick!Danny that comes in to play. I hope you enjoy. I'm really looking forward to your thoughts.

Danny gets sick a week later. Not the vomiting kind of sick, thank god, but the fluey kind where your throat swells and your eyes stream and your nose is constantly stuffed and running at the same time. His entire body aches and he doesn’t leave his bed for three days. He feels weak and drained, and frankly gives up hope of ever leaving his bed. Grace visits once, but he doesn’t want to get her sick and so he tells her not to come back.

Steve doesn’t call in at all. Not once. But he does send messages throughout the first day Danny is out of school, sometimes funny, sometimes longing and sometimes just a ‘thinking of you’. Danny misses him: it’s another cavernous ache in his chest to add to the muscle aches everywhere else.

On the fourth day, his mom comes in with some more soup for lunch. He hasn’t been able to swallow much of anything, but he is really fed up of soup now. His mom takes his temperature. Even at seventeen, she looks after him. He revels in the attention, but it’s equally smothering and this whole illness has been a strange experience. Caught between childhood and adulthood, Danny has struggled to reconcile all his emotions.

“Fever seems to have broken, sweetie,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed to watch him swallow soup. “Do you feel better?”

“Not much,” he confesses. “Just really tired.”

“I get that.” His mom waits a while, watching him as he slowly forces spoonfuls of soup down. She draws a deep breath and then seems to sit up a little taller. “Has Steve been in touch?” she asks. The look she gives him makes him instantly wary. He knows that Steve thinks she’s okay with them, but in this instant his hackles are up.

“He sent me a message to see if I was okay after Grace visited,” he says, picking the message he knows was least obvious. His mom hums an acknowledgement. Then she looks away, gazing out of his window.

“Is everything okay, with Steve?”

Danny considers how to play this. He can assume she knows nothing and maybe get into more trouble, he can assume she knows everything and get into more trouble, or he can be vague and remain hopeful.

“I know he’s struggling, Ma. He’s misses Matt, like we all do.” He double whammies her, with his pet name for her and Matt in the same sentence. He doesn’t feel cruel, though, because he’s too damn scared.

“Are you helping him?” she asks.

“As much as I can. He’s an adult, and I’m a kid, but we both miss him. He . . . he tells me he has nightmares.”

“Like yours?”

“No, Ma, like the watching your friends blow up kind.” He watches her swallow uncomfortably and he does regret that response. She is thoughtful for a few moments, no doubt wallowing in painful memories. He places his hand over hers and she slowly shifts her attention back to him.

“I’m worried about him, but I’m worried about you too. He’s family, Daniel, and family looks out for family. So I’m going to ask you straight out, and I want honesty because I’ll know if you’re lying. Okay?” Danny nods, small and tight. “What exactly is going on between you two?”

Danny takes a breath and looks her.

“Nothing, Ma. I like spending time with him, because it reminds me of when I was younger and he and Matt would be here.” The lie burns in his chest. He’s not even sure why he said it, because Steve thinks she knows and that means he should maybe tell her. But the fear of her stopping them being together is more overwhelming than the fear of her knowing.

“No, Danny, that’s not it.” She says it really quietly and the fear crawls into the pit of his stomach, nausea suddenly overwhelming. “Do you love him?” He just nods. “Does he love you?” He nods again, words completely lost to him now. “You need to be careful, honey, because not everyone might be as tolerant as me. I . . . I don’t like it, he’s so much older than you, but you’re not like other boys your age and I’m trying to trust your judgement. But,” and there is sudden a steely gaze meeting his that brooks no argument, “you must tell me if he ever asks you to do something you don’t want to.” Danny’s mind flashes back to a week ago, where Steve had stroked him off in this very room because of Danny’s own begging.

“Ma,” he blushes. “He takes care of me, we aren’t at that sort of stage with anything yet. I like being with him.”

“You’re my baby,” she says, “And I love Steve too. He’s like another son and I know he looked after Matty for us all. But he’s a man, you said it yourself, and if he hurts you I will kill him. And your Dad can’t know, Danny. If he finds out, you’ll never see Steve again. He loves him, he does, but he’s not going to understand this.”

“Then why do you?” Danny asks, breathless and afraid.

“I don’t, not really baby. I just . . . I guess . . . ugh.”

He gives her a minute to think. The silence in his own brain is overwhelming.

“I don’t want to do anything that means I would lose you, and fighting over this would just drive you away. I can’t lose you as well. But that doesn’t mean I like it, you hear me? He has almost a decade on you, he’s a messed up Vet with family issues, and I don’t think this thing between you is healthy. I wanted you to help each other, not sleep together. I thought you might find an older brother in him, and that you might help him reconcile everything that happened. I was an idiot, clearly,” she huffs, “but what’s done is done. Just, be careful. Remember that you have your whole life in front of you and you can stop this whenever you want. If he does or says anything you don’t want, you tell me. Promise me, Danny!”

“I promise, Ma, calm down. It’s all right. This is still new, but I’ve always liked him. I thought you knew that?”

“I did. I was naïve.” She gathers the tray and heads for the door. “I love you, Danny.” And then she is gone, leaving Danny a churning mess of guilt and hurt and relief that is far too difficult for his flu addled brain to reconcile. He drifts off into an uncomfortable sleep, his mind and heart working together to try and understand how he really feels.

He manages to drag himself back into school the following day, though it’s by no means an easy feat. He hasn’t heard from Steve in over a day and he needs to speak to him, but he passed out before sunset the night before and didn’t have time to call. It’s risky, but he’s going to ask to see him after the lesson – he needs to make up work, after all, and it’s a good excuse to have Steve to himself for a few minutes.

When he finally gets to class, Steve looks awful. His skin is ashen, aside from his nose which looks red raw, and his eyes are exhausted. He’s coughing dreadfully, and wearing a sweater despite the usual warm Hawaiian weather.

Oh god – he has Danny’s flu.

What the hell is he thinking being at work? Danny couldn’t even get out of bed. Steve perches on the edge of his desk, blows his nose again, and coughs a little more.

“Let’s get started, guys,” he croaks, and all eyes are on him intensely. Danny glances back to Grace, who gives him a knowing-eyebrow raised look and a shoulder shrug, a ‘what are you going to do?’ challenge of a look.

Steve battles through the lesson, using the students to read passages aloud and carry the discussion. Steve doesn’t so much ignore Danny as try to avoid eye-contact with everyone. He is clearly feeling very sorry for himself, and Danny immediately feels guilty. As the lesson draws to an end, with several more hacking coughs from Steve, he is suddenly aware of the guy behind him trying to pass him something. Feeling ridiculous, he reaches back and grabs the piece of paper being thrust at him. While Steve collects in assignments, Danny looks down to the note which has been passed from Grace.

_You gave him your disease. Fix him. I can’t stand seeing him like this. It’s gross. G_

Danny smiles and glances over at her for the first time all lesson -he had totally been ignoring her so as not to give her any more ammo. It’s an admission now, the grin, but he can’t help it. As the bell rings and students file out, Danny leaves his things where they are and strides towards Steve’s desk. Grace slips out, knowing there’s no point waiting or being in the way.

“Coach?” Danny asks, mindful they're still at school, and Steve’s head snaps up. God his eyes are awful, red rimmed and exhausted.

“Danno?” Steve replies, and Danny is suddenly really worried. Steve would never call him that in school. Steve slumps back in his chair and rubs his face.

“You should be at home,” Danny says, moving round the table and putting his hand on Steve’s forehead. “Damn, you’re on fire. You need to go home. Go tell Principal Grover and get out of here.”

“No,” Steve says, with a shake of his head which seems to cause his eyes to roll backwards. “It’s just a bit of a cold.” He reaches forward as though to pick a pen up off the table, but misjudges it. It would be funny if he weren’t almost delirious.

Danny grabs his phone out of his pocket and calls Grace.

“Yo, need me to grab you lunch?”

“I need you to come back to class, right now,” Danny says, breathless with worry. Steve’s sweating now.

“On my way.” She hangs up and Danny pockets his phone as Steve tries to stand.

“Just a cold, Danno,” Steve slurs, and right now Danny is doubly worried that Steve will fuck up and say something he shouldn’t in front of someone he shouldn't.

“It’s not a cold, Steve, you're forgetting I’ve had this.”

Grace bursts through the door, takes one look at Danny holding Steve back in his chair, and starts to leave again. “I’ll get the nurse,” she calls and disappears. Danny grabs Steve’s water bottle from the desk and tries to encourage him to drink but Steve keeps swatting it away. Danny growls in frustration and tries once more with a whispered, "Please, Steve, for me," and Steve finally takes a small sip before wincing as it goes down.

“Oh, babe, I know,” Danny says softly, just as Grace and the nurse hurry through the door. Danny doesn’t pull back, though he should, but he thinks Steve might try something stupid if he does.

“Mr McGarrett?” the nurse asks, trying to get his attention. "Steve? Steve, can you tell me how you're feeling?" When Steve barely responds, her face pales and she reaches for the radio she has clipped to her belt. Steve is gripping Danny’s hand like it’s the only thing tethering him to the planet.

“I’m going to send Coach home,” the nurse says, smiling at the two students who so thoughtfully came to get her.

“There’s no-one at home, though,” Danny says quietly.

“Oh?” The nurse looks at him more closely then, holding Steve’s hand, and does an almost double-take.

“Danny’s brother and Coach were in the army together,” Grace supplies helpfully, and a moment of recognition and pity flits across her face. The excuse seems to have worked.

“I see, well maybe I’ll need to get an ambulance then. I don’t think he’s going to be able to take care of himself like this."

Danny looks up—hospital? No way, Steve would hate that. He fumbles in his pocket again and withdraws his phone, speed dial number 1 already in motion.

“Mom?” he asks as soon as the call connects.

“What is it, Danny?” she asks, worry stitched into each word. “You still not feeling good? Do you need to come home?”

“It’s not me,” Danny says, “It’s Steve. He has the flu.”

There is a knowing silence on the other end of the line and he gives his mom a few seconds to process before continuing. She knows they shared this bug. “The nurse wants to send him home, but he can’t go home alone. But he’d hate hospital, Ma, wouldn’t he?”

“I’m on my way.”

Hours later, when Danny is finally finished with school, Grace sidles up next to him in the corridor and gives him a hug.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly into his ear. Danny is confused and draws back a little, waiting for her to explain. “I didn’t know what it was between you. I was . . . angry, I guess, maybe jealous. I thought he might be using you, Danny. But he’s not, is he?”

Danny can’t speak, can’t respond, but chews his lip nervously.

“Look. I don’t understand it yet, but I want to.” She hugs him again. “Did your mom take him home?”

Danny pulls out his phone and looks at the messages he’s received from his mom all afternoon. He’s checked them when he can, but it’s been difficult.

“She took him to our house. He’s passed out in my room. Ma’s calling it the sick ward. Guess I’ll be on the couch.”

“You could share with him,” Grace says with a cheeky grin. Danny tries to laugh but the sound is cold on his dry, cracked lips.

“He’s really sick, Grace. I know how he feels, remember.” He gives her a knowing look and she nods.

“Go home. Take care of him. If you have a relapse, I’ll understand.” She air quotes the word relapse and Danny laughs, a little more thoroughly this time.

“I’ll be in tomorrow. I need to catch up—don’t want to risk not graduating.”

They walk home, arm in arm, though Danny still feels weak and so it’s a struggle. On the way, they call past the football field to excuse him from practice. Principal Grover had already let everyone know Steve wasn’t going to make practice, but the Head Coach is there and he understands why Danny isn’t staying.

When Danny arrives home, there is milk and cookies in the kitchen for him. The milk is warm and the cookies soft, and it eases his sore throat and empty stomach. He hadn’t been able to eat a thing when his mom finally took Steve home, which wasn’t without argument. In the end, Danny had squeezed Steve’s hand and asked him to go home, for Danny.

“Anything for you, Danno,” Steve had whispered. Grace had been there, his mom too, but neither acknowledged the slip up and Steve slumped into the car.

“He’s asleep,” says his mom as she comes down the stairs. “His temperature is still really high, but I got him to take some Tylenol and water. I think if we can get him to shower before bedtime that might help. He’s bad, Danny, worse than you got.”

“That’s because the idiot went to work,” Danny groans.

“Go. Sit with him. He’s in and out of it but we need to watch him. If he gets any worse, he’s going to the emergency room whether he likes it or not. Can you—” She stops and draws a breath, a nervous breath. “Will you stay with him overnight, watch him? If anything changes you wake me up, but maybe he’ll sleep better with you there.”

“Sure, mom,” Danny says. “I’ll dig out the air mattress.”

He feels his mom’s nervous exhale as he heads out of the kitchen and makes his way upstairs.

His bedroom door is open, and Steve is tucked up in Danny’s bed, under the quilt. His face is flushed, and he’s snuffly. Danny would think it was cute if he wasn’t so worried. He watches Steve sleep for a while, but it’s as if Steve can sense him because he opens his eyes and looks blearily at Danny.

“Danno?” he croaks.

“Yeah, babe, it’s me. You need to stop with the Danno stuff though. You nearly got us into trouble,” he says, with a small but playful grin.

“I don’t feel good,” Steve says redundantly, and Danny realises that Steve is going to be okay. He and his mom will take good care of him and get him back on his feet in no time.

And then he needs to tell Steve about everything his mom said.

That will be fun.


	14. Mary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all angst and pain and confusion, and was fucking awful to write. I want to warn for triggers regarding underaged people in relationships, and being the subject of someone's focus who is much older. If this could be an issue, please read the notes at the end before reading this chapter. Thank you. Please note this warning and look after yourself!

When Mary returns from visiting Aunt Deb, she heads straight to Steve's house. He had sent a few sporadic text messages in the last week and she had managed to piece enough together to know he'd been sick. What she isn't clear about from the messages was where Danny and his family fit in to the story.

"Steve?" she calls, pushing her way into the little house her brother calls home, Joan propped on her hip and hugging her brand new stuffed hippo.

"In here," Steve replies from the kitchen. She hurries down the hallway and into the small room at the back of the house. Steve is stirring something on the stove, but when he turns to her the first thing she notices is the grey pallor of his skin and the circles under his eyes.

"My god!" she gasps, "What happened to you?"

"The flu, it turns out, not a cold." Steve doesn't explain further but pours the soup he has been stirring into a bowl. He gestures at her but she shakes her head, and he puts the pan back on the stove. “How was your trip?”

"Don’t do that! Why didn't you call me?" she demands, annoyed that he is downplaying his illness. They have been working on this brother/sister thing, but they’re still learning. Several years apart had driven a wedge between them and they were both having to work hard to push it out. Steve had anticipated that she might be upset, but her anger is richer than he had thought, deeper.

"You were with Aunt Deb, and I wasn't going to call you back home for the flu. I wasn't dying, and you needed the break," Steve scoffs. “Plus, I didn’t want you or Joanie to catch it because it’s bloody awful.” He blows at the soup and sips a little, trying not to grimace at the soreness of his throat. Mary just waits, tapping her foot while Joan mutters to herself. Eventually, Steve puts his spoon down and sits back, raising his eyes to Mary's glare. "Okay. I _was_ pretty out of it but I didn't realise just how bad it was until and I got real sick at work. Danno was really worried and in the end he called Clara, who picked me up and looked after me for a couple of days, with Danny's help."

"Danny's help?"

"He had the flu first so knew what would help."

Steve thinks he sees some realisation sink in slowly, and Mary's face grows wary. "He had it first?" 

"Yes. Though in the last few days another three members of the team have gone down with it. It's pretty awful: high temp, delirium, constant fatigue. But Clara kept an eye on me and Danny watched me to make sure my fever broke."

"More members of the team? Are you sleeping with them all?" Mary demands hotly, an unpleasant taste in her mouth as she spits the words at him.

Steve feels his own anger simmer at her suggestion.

"I'm not sleeping with _any_ of them," he says slowly. He returns to sipping his soup and Mary plops Joan down on a blanket to play with the hippo. Joan looks up at the adults and watches them for a few moments, but then seems to realise nothing fun is going to happen and she goes back to chewing the ear of her hippo and slamming him into the ground.

Mary walks over and sits quietly next to Steve when it’s clear Joan is settled for a while.

"How do you feel now?" she asks quietly.

“Not great, but not close to dying like I did four days ago." She pats his knee and watches him eat for a while. He feels her stare and knows she has questions, but he also needs to finish this meal if he has any hope of being back to work on Monday. So he chooses to push through each swallow until the he finally finishes the tasteless concoction. Mary scoops the bowl out from under his nose and puts it in the dishwasher.

"You need to talk?" she asks. This isn’t easy for them, being open and honest with each other. She knows Steve can’t talk about much of his military career, just the same as she can’t talk about the two arrests and the drugs charge she carries. Getting pregnant with Joan is always going to be the best thing that happened to her, but it diverted her away from an early death—at least, that’s what Mary believes. But she wants them to have the sort of relationship where each can share their trauma, nomatterhow redacted or classified, and receive love back. “I’ll listen, I promise, and I’ll try to keep an open mind.”

Steve takes a couple of moments and seems to see something in her eyes that makes him begin to trust her.

"The last few days have been . . . interesting," he begins. And they really have. Two days at Danny's, in Danny's bed, which were all a blur of feverish dreams, cool cloths, and the scent of his Danno in his nose as he slept. However, the third day was far less of a blur. Danny explained everything Clara had said to him as quickly as he could—seemingly recognising that Steve was finally lucid enough but having limited time to share some pretty terrifying information—before he rushed off to school. He had waited the whole day for Clara to talk to him, but she didn’t. All day his anxiety had been high, but it seemed to accelerate his healing and he made his way downstairs before Danny got home in the hope that he could get the conversation (and death threats?) over with and he could be forced out without it being done in front of the man he loved. Still, Clara didn’t address anything, just made him tea. Steve didn’t know if it was a test: was she waiting for him to speak up? He wasn’t usually a coward about confronting anything, but he was weak and tired and he didn’t want to try to defend himself so he didn’t do anything except worry and stress and drink his tea.

“I think I’m in a mess, Mare,” he says quietly, resting his head in his hands.

“I think you might be too. What’s going on with you and Danny?”

Steve has only one response. Whether it’s what she’s expecting or not, he has no idea.

“I’m in love with him.” He feels rather than hears Mary’s sharp intake of breath.

“He’s just a kid, Steve, a kid. Don’t worry, open mind here, but I have to be the voice of reason too. How old is he now? Sixteen, seventeen?”

“Seventeen, and I know.” And the thing is, the strangeness that’s been churning in his gut for the last couple of days, is that knowledge and understanding that Danny is a kid. He’s known him since he was a toddler; best friends with Matty when Danny was small. He watched him grow. When Danny was seven, the then sixteen-year old Steve moved in to the Williams’ for a few weeks because his parents were arguing again and he needed a break. Danny was a kid, like the little brother he never had, and he enjoyed hanging out with him and rough housing and generally being boys. When he and Matt came home from their first deployment, and Steve once again camped out on their bedroom floor, he had been 21, Danny just 12. But this time he was inexorably drawn to him (he hadn’t been lying to Danny when he’d said that) yet he was beginning to question just who he was as a person. Before their final and fateful deployment, Steve had lain on the floor next to Danny’s bottom bunk, and watched the barely-fourteen year old boy sleep, stroking himself off at the thought of kissing him.

It was so fucking wrong and messed up.

Steve thinks must be ill, mentally ill. Or just a detestable person. He says as much to Mary.

“Did you think about other boys his age like that?” she challenges him quietly.

“Never,” Steve breathes, “it was only ever him.”

“Then you aren’t sick, Steve.”

“Mary, he was thirteen!”

“And you didn’t lay a hand on him,” she reassures. “You didn’t act on what you wanted.”

“But I have now. I’ve kissed him—a lot—and we’ve been intimate in lots of ways. Not sex, not penetration,” he blushes, needing to get this off his chest but also painfully aware how little he really knows about his sister and how strained their relationship has been over the years, “because he’s still a kid. Seventeen is no age to be dealing with a man like me. I must . . . if I was Clara I would be tearing me from limb from limb.”

“Clara knows?”

Steve recounts the rest of the story in disjointed, jumbled up sentences. The fever is burning away again at the edges of his concentration and pushing his brain into some of the darker places it’s been over the years. “I’m a predator, Mary, the bad guy. And I have to stop this before I hurt him.”

“Will you hurt yourself if you stop?” Mary looks at her brother and watches him slowly, painfully fall apart. His eyes, his exhausted grey eyes, fill with tears which Steve fails to blink back and then slowly spill over and drench his cheeks. He is shaking, his breathing ragged and his muscles tense and withdrawn. “Steve?” But Steve is just sobbing, his heart shattering at the thought of stepping away. But surely it’s the right thing to do? Surely he needs to protect them both and end this before it lands him in jail and humiliates Danny?

“I love him. I’m in love with him. And I know I am because I’m old enough to know what love really is. But I shouldn’t love him because _he_ isn’t old enough to know that, because I’m almost a decade older. I thought,” he pauses, trying to wrestle his breathing back under control. “I thought that he loved me too, but what if it’s just the excitement of the attention, of an older man wanting him?”

Mary waits and thinks a while. Everything Steve has said is true. It should be disgusting to her to hear that her brother had those thoughts about someone so young. But weirdly it issn’t. And she tells him so.

“You and Danny have always had this strange connection. I told you he had a crush on you years back, and you did on him, and I know the age difference freaks you out but I believe that we don’t control who we fall in love with.”

Steve pushes himself away from the counter top and drags his fingers through his hair, laughing bitterly.

“Would you be saying this if I had come to you ten years ago and told you I wanted to fuck Matt’s little brother? Because I did want to.”

“But you didn’t touch him, because you knew he wasn’t ready.”  
“Or did I just not want to get myself into trouble?” Steve’s voice slowly gets louder and louder, and Mary’s own frustrations raise their head.

“You aren’t that selfish!” she shouts, “and I can’t believe you’re thinking these things about yourself! You aren’t our parents! You’re a good man, an honest man.”

“And I’m in love with a seventeen year old boy!” Steve yells, slamming his fist into a cupboard. “I think it’s going to kill me. I can’t stay away, but if someone finds out I could go to prison, which I can’t face. Or I’m going to have to end everything with him and I don’t think I know how to live without him now.”

Mary steps towards Steve and wraps herself in his arms.

“Steve, you have spent the last few years always putting others before yourself. Not once have you ever had what you wanted, or taken what you needed, always country first. Maybe you’re meant to have this?”

“I haven’t always done that. I let Matt die for me. I am selfish, I did put myself first, and I let Matt die.”

It’s dark when Danny gets the message.

 **Steve M:** We need to talk, Danny.

 **Danno:** Now?

 **Steve M:** It can’t wait.

Danny’s heart grows immediately cold. He knows he’s going to go over. He knows that he can’t delay it. But something about the way Steve looked at him yesterday had set alarm bells ringing in Danny’s heart.

 **Danno:** I’m on my way.

  
Steve stares at the screen until it goes dark on its own.

Mary and he had talked for hours, but it was clear that he had to let Danny go now. Even if it wasn’t forever, he had to let him go, because Danny had to grow and figure out what he wanted and needed in life before Steve could ask anything like this of him.

So he had to break up with Danny.

Was this the end? Or the beginning of something else?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve begins to confront what he sees as some unpleasant truths about himself in this chapter and, while I promised this would be HEA, it's really important to me that the adult in this relationship confronts his feelings for Danny, particularly how and when they developed. So, if you are already squicked or wigged out by the age difference, you may find this chapter to be an unpleasant read. We are dealing with Danny being underaged now, but also the age gap between them growing up and how Steve felt about a much younger Danny. So, just take care and if you find anything triggering here, you should be able to ignore this chapter and just move on the the next one knowing that Steve has had to begin to confront these things. Mary and Danny are going to be able to help him with this, but we need a little time for some self reflection.


	15. The end...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is 4300 words of porn, and 600 words of absolute gut-wrenching heart break.  
> I am both sorry and not - because if I had to live it to write it, then you should suffer as well.  
> Sorry not sorry.  
> (Don't worry, this is still going to be HEA, but we've got to get there!)

Danny steps into Steve’s house but doesn’t give the other man chance to breathe. He puts his hands on Steve’s chest, pushing him in to the wall and kicking the door closed behind him. He presses his lips to Steve’s and kisses him, deeply and with everything he has. Steve gives in for a moment, takes his pleasure and his pain in equal doses, cupping Danny’s face gently as the kiss deepens and lengthens. Danny needs to breathe, but he needs the kiss not to end even more and so he presses his body closer, let’s Steve feel what he does to him when they connect like this.

Steve drops his hands and places them on Danny’s biceps, before slowly ending the kiss and trying to put some distance between them.

“Danny. Danno, we need—”

“No,” Danny says, shaking his head gently, “I know what you’re going to say. I know it. But it can wait a few more hours. Just a few more hours and then I’ll hear it. But I need you, right now in this moment. I need you.” And he presses their mouths together again. Steve feels invigorated, tangled together with Danny, like he could fight a thousand wars and still have energy for this.

But this is not going as he planned. God, he _wants_ so badly, but he also needs to stop it, to shut it down. Danny’s hand is suddenly pressed against his dick, where it is tightly pressed in his jeans, and the guttural groan that rips itself from within him seems to shatter the silent passion they had been wrapped in.

“Fuck,” Danny gasps, pressing more rhythmically now against Steve’s erection and rolling his hips against Steve’s thigh in counterpoint. “I know what you want to say, but just say it later. Please,” he begs. Deep down, he knows that Steve is going to push him away, is going to stop this before it gets any further, but Danny is going to fight tooth and nail to have everything he can before that happens.

“We can’t,” Steve whispers. Danny looks up into his eyes, and sees the unshed tears balancing on his lashes.

“We can. What you mean is we shouldn’t.”

“Semantics,” Steve says, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

“No. It’s not. Steve, I am madly, deeply in love with you and, despite what you think, we absolutely can do this. I know you love me too, that you want me.”

“I do,” Steve says, because it’s blatantly obvious what Danny does to him. Danny nods, decisively, and takes Steve’s hand, leading him towards the stairs. “Danno,” Steve gasps, pulling backwards gently. Danny doesn’t relent, and Steve seems powerless in this moment to stop himself or Danny. He loves this man, with every fibre of his being, but he also knows he’s going to break Danny’s heart—and likely his own—so he begins to reason with himself that they should have this night, this one night.

It’s a fucking stupid idea, and he knows it. But his heart _wants_ , his dick _wants_ , and _he_ wants.

Danny leads them into Steve’s room, then turns around and lifts off his shirt. Steve has seen Danny shirtless before, hundreds of times, but this is different in so many ways. Steve steps forwards and kneels down in front of Danny, presses his head to Danny’s abs and wraps his arms around him. He is terrified and exhilarated, but he’s also devastatingly sad, and he wraps his arms around Danny’s waist and holds him. He just holds him and breathes. The scent of Danny fills his nose, the heartbeat beneath his ear is fast but steady, and it steadies his own. He just holds him and waits and feels and breathes, absorbing everything he can while he can.

Danny loses track of time as he cards his fingers through Steve’s hair. The shuddering and rushed breathing he had felt originally is now settled and calm. It felt like Steve was falling apart around him, and Danny just held on tight and waited for him. Danny is confused himself: this wasn’t his plan when he set off over here but it was where they had somehow ended up. He wants to feel sad, or miserable, but right now he just feels lonely. Steve is going to end this thing between them, even though it has only just begun, and Danny is simply trying to pretend it isn’t going to happen. The turmoil of emotions begins to overwhelm him and he pushes them all away again, focusing entirely on petting Steve’s hair and waiting for him.

He would feel tomorrow.

Steve’s breathing eventually calms enough for him to begin to focus back on Danny. Danno, who has been so patient with him now, who deserves the world, and who is waiting for him. Steve presses his lips to Danny’s stomach and chest: hot, dry kisses which ripple gooseflesh across Danny's body. Steve grins at that, licking his lips before continuing, dipping his tongue into Danny's navel and tracing a line down to Danny’s belt.

“Babe,” Danny breathes, reverent and soft as Steve continues to almost worship his chest and stomach: worship _him?_ Steve moans gently into Danny’s skin, splays his broad hands out across Danny’s back and presses his fingertips in as he maps out Danny’s body. Danny shivers under Steve’s hot breath and hot hands and closes his eyes, letting himself just feel. He realises, as his eyes slip closed, that Steve and he are not fucking, they aren’t going to be fucking, Steve is going to make love to him. He is utterly overwhelmed.

Steve savours everything: taste, sound, smell, sensation. He knows he’s probably not going to have this ever again and he wants to imprint everything into his memory.

_There can never be anyone else after Danny._

“Babe, please, you’re killing me,” Danny groans, pressing his fingers into Steve’s scalp. Steve looks up and Danny stares into his eyes once again, pain and pleasure swirling and churning in the grey-blue irises.

“Good,” Steve breathes. He stand then, lifting off his own shirt and then wrapping Danny in his arms once more. He presses open mouthed kisses to Danny’s jaw and neck and traces his spine with light, feathery fingers. His own cock presses angrily at his fly, desperate for attention. But Steve can wait. Wants to wait. Wants to make this amazing for them both, but especially for Danny. They’ve never really discussed it, but he knows that this is Danny’s first time having sex, and he wants him to always remember it, to always have this.

Just as he will.

Steve steps back and takes off his jeans and underwear quickly, before stepping back into Danny’s space. “Turn around,” he says, the tone dark and low. Danny does as he is told, and Steve shivers at the responsiveness. He runs the palms of his hands across Danny’s shoulders, then follows their path with more kisses. Danny’s head drops forward and his breaths lengthen and deepen, soft curses and hot gasps as Steve explores and learns and loves. Danny’s heart is beating wildly now, and his fists flex as he fights the urge to turn and take control rather than letting Steve lead. It feels like he’s falling apart, drowning in sensations he’s only imagined.

Steve is on his knees again, behind Danny, and laving at the dimples just above his belt. Carefully, he reaches around and begins to unfasten Danny’s belt, slides the zip and flicks open the button, before tugging them carefully to Danny’s ankles. Then, he traces the top of Danny’s boxer shorts with the very tip of his tongue. Danny jolts, surprised because Steve is still behind him. Steve continues, but each pass he makes has him tugging the waistline down a little more, and a little more, and a little more.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Danny’s gasps are hoarse curses and Steve smiles into Danny’s skin. He smells like coconut and salt and sweat, and Steve is in love with the taste and the smell of him. He places his palms firmly on Danny’s waist and turns him carefully, letting him kick his jeans out of the way in the process. He looks up into Danny’s eyes, and the blackened, lust-filled pupils that stare back are gratifying and gorgeous. Danny bends down, takes Steve’s mouth in a bruising kiss that twists their tongues together and tastes dirty. The kiss goes on for minutes, each man savouring their pleasure, until Steve finally draws back and Danny stands straighter again.

Using his tongue once more, Steve traces the line of hair from navel to top of underwear and back again. Danny trembles beneath him, so desperate for more contact or connection but also never wanting the sweetness of the torture to end. Steve is also growing impatient though. He wants to taste Danny and so finally draws the black boxers down fully, Danny’s cock springing out and into his eye line. Steve swallows. He’s seen it before, of course, but not up close and personal like this. Danny is clearly extremely turned on. Steve can see the purpling head poking a little from within the wrinkle of foreskin still remaining, precome beading within. Steve watches, knows his gaze will feel like fire to Danny, and sees the precome slip slowly out from within. He reaches out with his tongue and captures it, groaning as the taste fills his senses again. He presses his forehead to Danny’s thigh and breathes. He is suddenly and absolutely overwhelmed by this-it’s the first time in his life that sex has really meant anything to him.

“Babe? Steve? You okay?” Danny asks, fingers in Steve’s hair again and breathing ragged.

“More than okay, Danno. Really. Just, I love you. Okay? Promise me you’ll remember that. I love you. Completely.” Steve looks up and Danny just nods, the gravity in Steve’s words heavy and comforting in his chest. Steve breathes in deeply to settle himself and then allows himself a little, wicked grin. He is going to love this. “You had a blow job before?” he asks, then slides his tongue along the length of Danny and presses a single kiss to the ever more-exposed head.

“No,” Danny says, “never.”

“Good.”

Steve licks his palm once, and slides it gently down the length of Danny’s cock, drawing the last of the foreskin back and exposing the bruise-purple head to the air. To his credit, Danny doesn’t say anything, but when Steve glances up he notices Danny’s teeth are buried in his bottom lip as he fights for control over himself. There is no desperation this time, no over-eagerness to satisfy quickly, and he seems to realise he is simply going to have to take what Steve gives him.

Steve wraps his lips around the head of Danny’s cock and uses the tip of his tongue to massage the frenulum below, before laving over the sensitive glans. He repeats this over and over, his own cock clearly straining for attention. Again, he ignores his own physical needs, because he knows there is so much more to come, and he can wait for that, wait for Danny buried deeply within him. He groans and he feels Danny's shudder beneath him. Danny presses an open palm to Steve’s cheek and then groans himself as Steve takes him in a little more, uses his hand to stroke Danny’s cock, and Danny sighs as the pleasure he had felt all over him now condenses into one area. Steve’s attentive, sets up a gentle rhythm that sends darts of pleasure up his spine and down into his toes. It’s not enough to get him off, yet, but he thinks that’s probably the plan. Steve changes up the rhythm now and then, tightens his fist or blows on the glans, laves at the veins or deep throats Danny for so long that tears leak from the corners of his eyes and he needs to gasp in breath as he withdraws. Danny rolls with it, enjoying every sensation while trying (and failing) to remember what he does so that he can repay the favour. A pessimistic little voice screams from the back of his head that he doesn’t get to do this again, but he squashes it down and away because he just has to.

Suddenly, Steve picks up the pace and steadies out the rhythm so that the tingle of pleasure that had been coursing through Danny is now white hot and focused in his balls. It’s delicious in its intensity, and Danny groans but fights to stay focused, to watch as Steve pulls him apart. He wants to see everything, to hold it in his memory and keep it safe.

“Steve. Steve, please I’m going to—” Steve does not stop, just swallows around Danny, stroking firmer and faster, until the orgasm that Danny had been fighting is finally drawn out of him. Steve feels the hot, salty come fill his mouth and trickle down his throat before he swallows, gratefully and willingly. He’s really hoping this isn’t the only hole Danny will fill with his come this evening.

Danny’s knees are shaky, but he drags Steve from the ground, pushes him to sit on the end of the bed, and straddles him. He feels Steve’s thick, heavy cock beneath him and he pulls it up to stand between them. Danny has never been this close to another cock, and he takes long moments to stroke and tug and tease until Steve’s grip on Danny’s hips is tight and he’s sure bruises will be left.

“Danno, please. Not yet. I don’t want this to be over yet.”

Danny’s heart wrenches in his chest: there are so many layers of meaning in Steve’s words. Instead, Danny lets go of Steve’s cock (only because he has to, he was enjoying himself way too much) and presses Steve back.

He drapes himself over Steve like a blanket and begins to use his mouth to explore Steve the same way he had been explored. Only for Danny, he starts at the arms. He traces the lines and colours and curls of the tattoos that cover Steve’s arms, first with fingers and then with tongue. He studies them, takes in the shapes and the feel of Steve. For his part, Steve writhes and gasps beneath Danny, seemingly over sensitive about it.

“What do they mean?” Danny asks, before returning his mouth to the hot flesh of Steve’s upper arm.

“They . . . ah . . . peace, Danno. I just want to find . . . ah . . . peace.”

Danny swallows back the dreadful sadness that washes over him, quickly shoves images of Matt out of his brain, and stretches back to kiss Steve frantically. Steve is so turned on that he gasps between kisses, chases Danny’s tongue with his own, and steadily runs his hands up and down Danny’s sides and back, trying to absorb everything once again.

Danny lifts himself up a little and grins down at Steve beneath him.

“Turn over,” he says, the grin widening at Steve’s own. But Steve does turn over, without question, and Danny lowers himself again after shuffling backwards, resting lightly over Steve’s thighs so that he can study the huge back piece that Steve has. Stretching all the way across his lower back and over his hips, Danny tries to take in everything he sees, but all he can really see is the way the lowest point sits just over Steve’s tailbone. And Steve’s ass is a thing of beauty. Round, firm and delicious. Danny moulds his hands around the globes before laving across the tattoo. Steve is humping the bed beneath him and Danny laughs a little.

“Babe,” he says, pressing his hand to Steve’s ass.

“Need you, Danno,” Steve says, and the catch in Steve’s throat rips Danny’s heart to pieces. Suddenly more eager than he has ever been, he stands up and pushes at Steve’s legs until he is bent over, until his hole is exposed and Danny can drink in his fill.

Danny has a pretty good idea what he’s doing. He’s watched porn, he’s done research, and he’s fingered himself plenty. But he wants this to be good for Steve, so he takes his time. He runs the tip of his tongue down from Steve’s spine to the top of his hole, then draws back again, repeats the motion until there is a cool, wet trail of his spit. He replaces his tongue with his index finger, lapping over the trail again and again, while his tongue mirrors from the other side. Balls to hole, Balls to hole. Finger to hole. Finger to hole. Never touching, never lapping over or darting in, just teasing endlessly. Steve is a gasping mess, his fingers tangling in the sheets below him. Danny is amazed that he has done that, that he could do that. And it swells his confidence.

“Lube?” he asks. Steve points over to the bedside table and Danny leans over, grabbing the little bottle and pumping a few drops onto his fingers. “Tell me how it feels,” Danny says, leaning down to breathe the words into Steve’s ear. Steve has been way too quiet. Another vestige of military life, Danny supposes. Steve shakes his head but Danny repeats the words, this time as his finger circles the furled hole of Steve’s entrance.

“No,” Steve gasps. “Please, I can’t. It’s too much.”

“I need to hear it,” Danny presses. “I want to know it feels good.” He presses the tip of one finger in and Steve’s ass just welcomes him. There is no resistance, just the warm channel of Steve’s hole. Danny gasps a little, rubbing the other hand over the globes of Steve’s ass again and watching as his finger disappears into the man below him, disappears until he can go no further.

“Fuck,” he gasps. He never imagined it to be like this. To be so easy.

“More, Danno. Please, I need more. I need to feel you. More.” Steve babbles, his face smashed into the bed as he fights for control. He still hasn’t touched himself, at all, and Danny is awed that he has made this man below him such a mess, that he has made him so hard and desperate. He presses in a second finger, and Steve hisses a yes before thrusting his fingers back to meet Danny’s intrusion.

Danny stretches and twists his fingers, seeks out Steve’s prostate (he’s found his own once and remembers the explosive orgasm he had—he wants that for Steve) and then presses over it. Not consistently, not enough for Steve to come, but enough to begin to drive him wild. Meanwhile, he runs his other hand over Steve’s ass, his back, his legs, and sometimes his own raging hard on. Danny knows his youth is helping him here, but he’s never been this hard this fast after an orgasm. Another first he gets to share with Steve before the end comes crashing in on them.

“Danny, please,” Steve moans.

“What, Steve?” Danny teases. “Tell me what you need.”

“Will you fuck me? Please. I want you in me.”

Danny hesitates because he is overwhelmed and in love and it’s his first time. He is overwhelmed because he still has no idea why Steve likes him in any way. And he is overwhelmed because he realises he has never wanted anything more in his life. But the pause worries Steve, who looks back at Danny, confusion across his brow.

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to or you aren’t ready.”

“I want to, babe, I do. It’s all just a lot, you know?”

Steve turns around and comes to sit in front of Danny, pressing their lips together gently, reassuringly and Danny melts into it. They share soft kisses for a few moments, breathing in each other, before Steve slowly lays back. He tugs a pillow under his hips and then waits. Danny just watches him for a few moments before leaning forward and over Steve. He kisses his way down Steve’s chest, slipping two fingers back into Steve’s ass just as easily as before, and then gently takes the head of Steve’s cock into the warmth of his mouth. Steve’s groan vibrates through the bed and Danny let’s Steve’s cock fall back, smiling that he’s making Steve feel good.

He slicks his cock up, fisting and stroking himself slowly and sees Steve watching him, so he makes a bit of a show of it this time. Then he shuffles forward and presses the head of his cock against the fluttering opening of Steve’s ass.

“Okay?” he asks. He’s not wearing a condom and he wants to be sure.

“Yes, god yes. In me, please. I want to feel you.”

Danny takes himself in hand again and pushes, frustratingly slowly, into Steve. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t need to wait for Steve to adjust, just takes his time until he bottoms out.

And then he waits. Because, wow?

Being inside Steve is incredible and intense and just a bit too much all at once. Steve knows Danny is new at this, so he doesn’t push, despite the fact he is growing increasingly desperate to have Danny move. Meanwhile, Danny kisses Steve’s collar bone lightly and breathes.

“Okay?” Steve asks, because he needs to.

“More than okay!” Danny laughs. He raises up a little then, and withdraws slowly, shivering at the sensation before thrusting forward. He watches every expression on Steve’s face. He names them all: love, awe, lust, desperation, sadness.

Steve watches Danny watching him and knows he’s hiding nothing. Having Danny inside him is so much better than he had allowed himself to imagine. Danny’s cock is thick and stretches Steve deliciously. He can feel every point at which they are connected and, as he lies back and watches Danny take him, watches his own hands rove over Danny’s arms, hears his own voice whispering Danny’s name, he realises he needs to get back in the game. To be inside his emotions.

Taking control, Steve flips them until he straddles Danny, the younger man’s cock still buried deeply within him. He holds Danny’s wrists in one hand above his head, and uses his other hand to trace the ridges of Danny’s abs, to tweak at his nipples and roll the swollen nubs. And he uses his legs to raise himself up and down, over and over, taking pleasure from Danny himself. Danny squirms beneath him, overcome with the emotions and the sensations. Steve delights in knowing that he’s doing that, that he is making Danny feel so good again.

Danny doesn’t want to come yet, because he wants to fuck Steve through his orgasm, but Steve clearly has the upper hand. Danny waits, enjoys, and then seizes the opportunity when it produces itself. Steve raises himself, hovering above Danny with just the head of his cock still in his ass, when Danny raises his knees and uses the strength in his legs to flip them back again. Steve is laughing when they land, until Danny pushes back a leg and thrusts in deep, and hard, over and over. Then Steve is done and Danny relishes the way Steve finally and completely falls apart.

He thrusts, over and over, and knows that Steve will feel this tomorrow. Steve’s cock bounces around angrily and Danny licks his palm, swipes the precome which is pooling around his navel, and finally takes the cock in hand. He remembers how Steve brought him off, and mimics the movements, twisting on the up, contrasting the moves with the thrusts he makes, and Steve is quickly a babbling mess.

“So close, Danno!” he gasps. “So close.”

Danny smirks and bends down, presses his lips to Steve’s ear, and whispers: “Come for me, Steve, I want to see you come for me.”

He sits back up, thrusts long and hard, strokes fast and firm, and Steve eventually gives up. As he comes, Danny watches the micro-expressions that flit across his face. Steve is beautiful as he comes, just as he knew he would be.

Danny doesn’t relent though. He continues to thrust hard and fast into Steve, who is oversensitive and loving it. He thrusts and Steve comes back to himself, watching Danny this time.

“This is what I wanted to see, Danno,” he says quietly. “I wanted to watch you come while you were buried deep in my ass. I wanted to feel everything you could give me. You were made for this, babe, made for me. Come for me, Danno. Come for me.”

And he does.

They lie, twisted in each other, and Steve talks. He talks about growing up in a house with parents who seemed to be playing at being married. He talks about loving being in Danny’s house, about playing with him as a kid. He tells him what he told Mary, about wanting him even when Danny was too young to know what _wanting_ was. And he talks about how, if they continue to be together, he believes Danny will end up resenting him for stealing his childhood. Danny just listens and lets Steve talk, lets him share. Inside, he is burning with an anger he can’t voice and an agony that threatens to tear him apart. Instead, he buries himself closer in to Steve, so that they are facing each other, and they trade passionate kisses until neither can keep their eyes open any longer and they drift off to sleep.

It’s the best night’s sleep either has had since Danny last spent the night in Steve’s bed.

Steve rises while it is still dark. He dresses in the hallway so as not to wake Danny. Then he messages Clara.

 **Steve:** Danny is here.

 **Clara:** I know.

 **Steve:** I’ll send him home in the morning. Then he won’t be coming back.

 **Clara:** Okay. I think I’m glad.

Steve puts his phone down and falls apart. Not in the way that he had a few hours before, but in the way that felt like he was dying, that felt like losing Matt had. Like when his mom died.

He cries brokenly, his already raw throat agonised by the intensity of it. He cries for an hour. Then he gathers himself back together and washes his face. As he sits down, he feels the plug he put in his ass press against his walls, and a fresh wave of tears threatens to engulf him. Maybe he isn’t meant to be happy? Maybe he isn’t meant to be loved? He waits. Waits for Danny.

When Danny wakes in the morning, Steve isn’t in bed any longer. Danny dresses slowly, feels tears wet on his cheeks, and makes his way downstairs.

“Morning,” Danny says as he steps into the kitchen. Steve ducks his head and replies with a quiet ‘morning’ of his own. “Is this it, then?” Danny asks.

Steve looks up then. “We can’t be together, Danny. It’s not right. Last night was amazing, but I can’t do this anymore.” Steve moves, turns away from Danny and leans against the breakfast bar.

“I’m in love with you,” Danny says simply.

“I know.”

“You love me too. You _made love_ to me last night. This is something special. What we have is special. You can’t just throw it away.” Danny has to fight the inevitability of this, even though he knows it’s just going to hurt more.

“Tell me you love me. Tell me you feel this.”

Steve doesn’t answer and Danny steps closer, pushing at invisible walls.

“I know you feel it too,” Danny whispers, his voice a warm breath on the back of Steve’s neck.

Steve suppresses a shiver. He doesn’t reply.

Inside a war wages within him and he knows he’s dangerously close to losing the battle.

“Why won’t you just say it?” Danny asks, desperation colouring the demand this time. He is so close that Steve can feel him, his heat, his energy.

Again, Steve remains silent.

It is the hardest thing he has ever had to do, which is really saying something.

When the front door closes, Steve collapses to the floor and the tears are renewed. He sees Danny everywhere, smells him everywhere, feels him everywhere. As his heart shatters, he wonders why he ever thought coming home was a good idea.

When the front door closes, Clara steps out of the kitchen and sees the mess that just came home. Danny’s face is blotchy, his arms are wrapped tightly around his chest, and he can’t or won’t look at her. She goes to him, wraps him in her embrace and shushes him, because she knows Steve did the right thing, but she’s sure it doesn’t feel right for any of them right now.

When the front door closes, and Danny steps onto the sidewalk, he doesn’t see the world around him. The colours are muted, the weather cool, and each step leaves behind more fragments of himself on the tarmac and concrete. When he closes his own front door, and he smells the safety of his family home, he allows the last parts of himself to die. He is hollow. Empty. Alone. Even in the arms of his mother, he craves something he can’t have. He hates himself. But he can’t hate Steve, he just can’t. He can still taste him on his tongue, feel him on his skin, and he’s going to have to hold on to that if he’s going to survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm sorry.  
> But I'm not.  
> *laughs wickedly*


	16. Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you're getting two chapters tonight, neither of which have been edited but I will go back through them in the next couple of days, so please try to see past the errors.
> 
> You're getting two because there was no way I could give you one without the other - and I hope you can see why when you read them. 
> 
> We are beginning to ramp up towards the conclusion of this, I think, with maybe only a handful of chapters left (though I thought this would only be six chapters when I started and look how that turned out!), so I just wanted to thank everyone who has stuck with this and kept me going with their comments - I love it immensely!

Steve pushes the very limits of body and wears the plug for almost fourteen hours, before he simply has to remove it. He’s not too manly to admit to himself that the sensation of removing it tears the last shreds of his control apart, and he goes straight to bed. The emptiness he feels is like no sensation he has ever had before, so overwhelming that it begins to feel like nothingness. Steve lies in bed for hours, unmoving, unfeeling, and just waits for the emptiness to end.

When his alarm sounds for work on Monday, he wants to just ignore it, to simply pretend it isn’t there. Flicking the slider on the phone, he notices several messages from Mary, a couple of missed calls, and a message from Clara. That’s the only one he reads.

**Clara:** He’s home. I hope you are okay.

Steve is not okay, and he doesn’t think that it’s fair of her to ask because this is all her fault. Well, it’s not, and he doesn’t really blame her, but he wants to feels angry or frustrated or something other than desolate. But he can’t raise any emotion whatsoever. He showers, dresses, leaves for work. It’s only as he arrives at the school that he realises he hasn’t eaten since before Danny, and he’s still recovering from the flu, so heads for the cafeteria in the hope of finding something to help him get through the day – even if it’s only coffee.

When he enters, the room is bustling with kids chattering and eating, and a few members of the team greet him and ask how he’s doing.

“Howzit, Coach?” asks Kame, a huge line backer who Steve thinks should probably have graduated a couple of years before. “You no lookin’ mo’ bettah, braddah.” Kame’s face screws up a little and Steve can’t help but smile at the informality of it all, even though he still feels empty inside.

“Howzit, Kamekona. I’m okay, thanks.” He pats the huge man-boy on the shoulder and heads for the counter. The second he is out of Kame’s aura, his mood slips back to desperately morose. He grabs a sandwich, heads to the lounge for coffee, and then camps out in his classroom.

With at least ten minutes left before the bell, his classroom door flies open and he looks up – straight into the eyes of Grace Tilwell. And she is steaming with rage. She slams the door behind her, and then storms up to his desk. Her eyes are wild with anger, her mouth pursed and her shoulders tense. She glares at him for a moment and he says nothing: just waits.

“If you weren’t my teacher, and if Danny hadn’t said I wasn’t allowed to, I would be quite literally killing you right now. What the hell are you thinking?” Her voice is low, incredibly so, and the fact that she is this angry but also this aware of their surroundings is admirable. He isn’t sure how she’s doing it, but then she isn’t heartbroken so maybe she has a little more control.

“I am not going to talk about this with you,” he says, placing his pen on the desk and folding his shaking fingers together.

“Well you sure as hell are going to listen. How could you do that to him? Tell him you love him and then walk away. You’re killing him!” Her voice raises a little at the end, then she glances around and flushes, taking a breath to calm herself again. “I want to tear you apart for doing that to him. He gave you everything and you just throw it back!”

Steve shivers, an emotion finally replacing the emptiness, and that emotion is anger.

“You think this is easy for me?” he growls, caving under the onslaught of her glare. “You think I just wanted to walk away? I had to. It’s not what . . . I didn’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice. No-one was going to tell anyone. His mom wasn’t going to say anything and I would never, ever have done that to him. You chose this.”

Steve feels the embarrassing sting of tears in his throat and he coughs to clear them. Thing is, he knows she’s right, knows that he chose this, but it wasn’t right.

But, damn, it felt right.

“I think you should go, Grace, classes will be starting soon.” He looks pointedly over her shoulder at the door, painfully aware that there will be other kids starting to arrive. Kids – kind of the point isn’t it? Grace just shakes her head at him and then draws in a deep breath.

“Danny won’t be in school today, _Sir_ , so I’ll be collecting his assignments for him. I’ll get it after class.” Then she spins on her two inch, bright-green heels, and storms back out the way she came.

Steve slumps in his chair, head in hands, and fights back the sob that is sitting in his chest. Danny isn’t coming in. Can he not bare to see Steve? Or is he so hurt that . . . it doesn’t help him to think this way. He wants to text Danny, to call him, to see him, to hold him—but he can’t and, like Grace said, this is his choice. He knows it’s the right one (god-hopes, anyway!), and he knows he made it for the right reason, so he has to stick to it now.

Grace glares at him for most of the first half of their lesson, but he ignores her and eventually her anger seems to simmer off a little and the death-stare eases enough that he can actually ask her questions and let her participate in the lesson without fear her tone will raise eyebrows. At the end of the session, she waits for everyone else to leave before collecting the packet of work to take home for Danny.

“I’m sorry, about this morning,” she says, her tone gentler. “He’s my best friend. It’s hard to see him like this.”

“Like what?” Steve asks, because he wants to torture himself apparently.

“He’s broken, Coach. I’ve never seen him like this.”

“Steve,” he says, shortly.

“What?”

“I need you to call me Steve, if we’re talking about Danny. Can you do that?” Grace just nods, seemingly understanding that Steve is trying to separate these parts of his life. “Thank you.”

“Is there nothing I can do or say to change your mind?”

“Pretty sure Clara would kill you if she knew you were trying to do this,” Steve says with a derisive huff. “But no, I need to do this for him. He’s only 17, and I’m his teacher.” There is finality in his words and Grace can see it.

“Will you tell me something, honestly, if I ask?”

Steve eyes her and pauses. She’s still a student – this relationship is treading along lines it shouldn’t really. But in the end he acquiesces with a nod.

“Do you love him?”

She cuts straight to the point, something he definitely admires. He doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to admit it anymore because he knows he needs to find some way to switch it off, but in the end he knows the truth is written all over his face, because Grace smiles sadly at him. “Then I think,” she continues, “that it’s a fucking shame that you took this job in the first place.” She collects her things and leaves quietly.

Long after the hot, Hawaiian sun has set, Steve is back to lying in his bed and staring at the ceiling. The heat is stifling, and he briefly ponders a fan, before his heart and mind betray him with memories of Danny. Their night together, in this bed, is a constant reminder of what should be, and it’s killing him. He needs to wash the sheets, needs to burn the damn things if it will help. Instead, he gathers up his pillows and slinks downstairs. Grabbing a throw from the cupboard—a housewarming gift from Mary which he had scoffed at because he couldn’t think when he would need it—he settles himself on the couch. There are memories here too, of course, laced into the fibres of the fabric and the inside of his eyelids, but the TV is also here. He flicks it on, surfing through channel after channel until he eventually drifts off to the sound of a commercial for vacuum cleaners or some other such shit.

Every day continues the same. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: still no sign of Danny. The register code says he’s off with the flu, still, but Steve suspects that’s utter bullshit. He’s almost fully recovered physically even though he is emotionally drowning. But not having seen Danny for almost a week is killing him. Like withdrawal, he seeks his fix and every day Grace sadly shakes her head and Steve has to continue without knowing what is happening. The ache in his heart is more a dull thrum or agony, humming through his system in a way that’s ever present. He’s been hurt before—shot, stabbed and one memorable impalement—but this is a pain he never knew existed.

At practice on Thursday, he notices an Asian man watching from the side-lines. The man waves at Steve and Steve waves back, politely, but doesn’t know who he is.

“Coach? Is that a scout or something?”

“Nah, Steve, that’s Chin-Ho Kelly.” Realisation dawns for Steve – that’s the quarterback whose records he smashed the following year.

“What’s he doing here? Come to check on the team?”

“Actually, I was looking for you.” Chin-Ho has appeared behind him and Steve immediately notices the badge and gun. _Shit!_

Steve’s brain goes into melt down. Has someone reported him? Who knows? Who found out? Is he going to prison? Panic swells inside but he beats it back, searches for the emptiness he was cursing just minutes before.

“I’m not sure what I can help you with,” he says as calmly as possible.

“Can we talk? In private?” Chin Ho asks, and directs Steve away from the field towards the bleachers. Steve nods and follows – what else can he do?

“I wanted to ask you a few questions about a case I’m working. But, I already expect to get stonewalled, so don’t worry about offending me.”

“Stonewalled?” Steve asks, while commending himself for speaking at all.

“We’re trying to track down an arms dealer by the name of Victor Hesse.”

Steve goes cold all over. Hesse? All the way out here in the islands? Steve feels himself stand taller, suddenly far more vigilant.

“Woah. So you know that name then?”

Steve draws in a breath and folds his arms across his chest. Chin Ho was right, be isn’t going to be able to say anything about what or how he knows, not really, but there’s no reason not to confirm what is already known providing nothing mission-specific is shared. “I know the name.”

“Okay then, well we have reason to believe that he’s on the island, or at least on his way. We have a few of his more _interesting_ associates in rendition, but they aren’t giving us anything. But then your name came up and I thought I’d come check it out.” Chin Ho’s demeanour is relaxed but attentive. Steve pushes all thoughts of Danny to the back of his mind (and deep in his heart) for the time being. If Hesse is here, then everyone is in danger.

“How’d my name come up?”

“A courier, by the name of Sang Minh explained that Hesse had put the word out to find you but couldn’t tell us why.”

Steve could. Steve could tell them why. The bullet he had put through Hesse’s brother’s brain was probably a pretty big reason. “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss this. I need to go, now.” Steve begins to dig in his pocket for his phone when it starts ringing. The number is Hawaiian, but not one he knows. Warily, he answers.

“McGarrett.”

“Lieutenant,” says the woman’s voice. Steve doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this. “This is Governor Jameson. I understand Captain Kelly is with you at this time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve replies, his grip tight on the phone and his eyes scanning the field.

“He’s going to ask you to accompany him to my offices so I can speak with you directly. I’d really like it if you would attend with him.”

“Okay. Can I ask what this is about?” Steve asks.

“No.”

Then the phone goes dead. He looks over to Chin Ho who gives him a ‘what’re you going to do’ shrug and leads the way, The coach watches him go, a nod to check he’s okay which Steve returns, and he gets back to the team. Steve, however, who five minutes ago thought he was going to be arrested for statutory rape, is now heading to the governor’s office.

Weird fucking day.

It’s dark and late and raining by the time Steve gets home. He’s exhausted, and the pain of Danny’s absence is still a gaping, agonising wound, but the last few hours have taken their toll and he needs to sleep and rest. But first, he needs to call Lou, which is likely not going to go down very well.

The call over, a hurried dinner of eggs and cheese eaten, Steve collapses back on to his sofa-bed. He still can’t sleep in his room, but now that he’s stopped going through the motions, he starts to feel an intense level of panic and fear curl up his spine. He is in danger right now, and so is everyone he knows, but they can’t show it. He’s got time, the intel says there’s time, but it doesn’t help to ease his spirits. In the end, after forty minutes or so of near hyperventilation trying to calm himself, he dresses and takes his service weapon from the lock box in the kitchen. Tucking it away, he leaves his house through the back door, taking care to look for any surveillance. He takes a crazy, circuitous route, but eventually he’s standing outside Danny’s house, on the opposite side of the street. There are a few trees and some fencing which he tucks himself away into so that he can’t be seen. And there, clutching his gun (safety on, for now), he sits to make sure Danny is safe.

Like before, weird fucking day.


	17. Danny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So part two of tonight's update. I really hope you enjoy this.

So everything hurts and Danny is just not up for it at all. He is sick of being the sad case who cries over his broken heart while eating candy and ice-cream. The sad fact is that it feels like all he can manage. He has battled with the urge to text Steve, to call him, to go over to his house and pound on the door. All of his mom’s platitudes about it being for the best, about how he was too young for something so serious, about how he has his whole life ahead of him, they all fell on deaf ears.

Danny Williams is completely and totally in love with Steve McGarrett. And Steve doesn’t want him.

It’s not that he hadn’t known something like this would happen, but it’s the fact that Steve promised it wouldn’t. He said he would look after Danny, protect him, make everything all right. But he hasn’t. Danny is quite literally experiencing his third panic attack in as many days, and they are crippling him. His mom won’t let him go back to school, and he can’t blame her when he isn’t sleeping or eating and, in some cases, can’t control his own breathing.

Pulse racing, mouth dry, chest painfully tight, vision blurred: Danny is a mess. His mom has tried siting with him, tried giving him space, but even she seems to be wondering how much longer this is going to last. She even got Grace on the phone the night before, but he had to hang up when his breathing got out of control. He wonders for the thousandth time that day if Steve even noticed he wasn’t in class. Did he ask where he was?

There is noise downstairs, the door closing, and then the light but hurried footsteps of his best friend. As Grace’s face appears in the doorway, the empty pounding of anxiety crescendos in his chest, and he starts to lose the battle with his own lungs again. Damn him! Damn Steve! This is all his fault. He’d thought everything was falling in to place, that he was moving on, but now he is exactly where he was three years ago. Fucking mess.

Grace sits in front of his huddled form, tied all up around himself on the floor next to his bed. Every sense in him is aware that this is where Steve stroked him off, where he stepped over the line just a little before they finally made love. His fingers burn with the memory of Steve’s skin beneath him and his heart beats erratically as his lungs seem to shut down almost completely. Grace presses her hand to his chest, just as she had seen Steve do in school, and she forces Danny to breathe with her until he finally gets some control. He’s still crying, though. Silent tears that fall steadily down his face and drip off his chin.

“Danny,” Grace breathes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Did you . . . did you talk to . . . to him, today?”

Grace looks back at him and she sees the brief battle that wages in her eyes, anger and frustration and pity shifting her features.

“I’m not sure that talking about it is going to help you,” she says softly, stroking his forearms rhythmically. It’s working, the repetitive contact, because he has something else to focus on. She is so perfect for him—if he were straight, that is. He fixes her with a stare and lets his desperation leak through.

“Okay, yes!” she says, “I talked to him.”

“Is that all?”

“I threatened to kill him. Told him if we weren’t at school then things would be different.”  
Danny smiles his first smile since Steve . . . and cups her cheek in his palm. “Thank you,” he says simply.

“But I didn’t make a scene, just like you told me. I was mostly calm. He asked about you.”

“What did you tell him?” Danny asks, warily.

“I told him you weren’t well and that …” As her voice trails away, Danny feels the panic start to rise again.

“And what?” he grits out. He categorically does _not_ want Steve to know the mess he’s in.

“I asked him to change his mind. Danny, he’s broken too. His eyes were, I don’t know, dead almost. Something was missing. He just wasn’t there. He looked so tired.”

“Serves him right,” Danny says miserably. Part of him is delighted that Steve is in pain too, because Danny should totally not be the only one to suffer, but he’s also heart-broken for Steve. He doesn’t deserve to feel like this either. It’s all just so unfair.

“He asked me to call him Steve, when I talk to him about you. I think he thought it was weird I was calling him Coach.” Grace shrugs and then sits back more comfortably, distancing herself a little from Danny in the process. “He seems different, Danny, and I don’t like it. I think you need to come back to school. I think you need to let him see you. Maybe then you can both—”

“What?” Danny cuts in angrily. “Just move on? That it? I can’t, Grace. I love him and now that we’ve, god I just . . .” Danny’s voice fades away into sobs and he buries his face in his hands.

“Did you sleep together?” Grace asks, her voice barely more than a whisper. Danny hadn’t been able to share this little nugget of information on the phone last night, but now that she’s piecing it together, this agony she sees in Dany makes so much more sense. He looks up at her, and she sees it in him. That’s the thing that she can see has changed in both of them. They are both stupid and fucked, in her opinion, and she is going to have to try and do something to sort it out.

Right now, though, she has to get Danny to shower and eat. She throws a towel at his head and hops downstairs to grab some snacks, fruit and chips if she can find them.

Clara is in the kitchen sipping at a hot mug, tea by the smell of it. She looks up as Grace steps into the kitchen.

“How is he?” she asks. She looks so sad: another of her boys is hurting and she can’t change it. She’s not even sure she wants to.

“I’ve sent him to shower and I’m hoping to get him to eat.”

“Do you know _everything_?” Clara asks, and Grace looks back at her again.

“Guess that depends on what everything means,” she says. She isn’t trying to be cryptic, but she doesn’t want to get Danny or Steve into trouble if she can help it. “I know Danny has been seeing someone a little older, connected to the family,” she says hesitantly. Clara seems to release all her tension through a breath.

“So you know about Steve?”

“I do.”

“Can I ask, how is he?”

“Steve?” Grace asks, not sure she’s following. Clara nods and puts her mug down, hands shaking a little.

“I hate to think he’s as bad off as Danny.”

“I think it’s fair to say they’re both struggling.” Grace collects a couple of apples, a bag of chips and a package of cookies before she slips a couple of sodas into her pockets.

“This is my fault,” Clara says quietly.

“No it isn’t,” Grace says, shaking her head and smiling at her. “This is no-ones fault. Love happens, but sometimes the world isn’t ready for it. Things happen for a reason,” she adds.

Just as her foot hits the bottom step, she hears Clara say one last thing, and is certain when she hears it that she wasn’t meant to. Gritting her teeth, she heads back upstairs to Danny: snacks and a movie await.

As Grace walks home later that evening, she can’t help but replay Clara’s words over and over in her head. She was certain that Clara wanted Danny and Steve to end what they were doing. But maybe, just maybe, she had an ally she wasn’t expecting. Or perhaps seeing the aftermath of the choices made was enough to make her see sense.

_“Matt would never have forgiven me for doing this to them.”_

Grace had asked Danny what his mom had said, but he didn’t want to talk about it and so she let it lie. But she wouldn’t forever.

Danny wakes on Thursday morning and feels . . . not better exactly, just fortified. He knows he needs to get through a couple of days without an attack before his mom relents on the going to school thing, but he feels like he has something of an appetite. He shuffles into track pants and makes his way down stairs. It’s late morning, so everyone else is gone except his mom. As he shuffles into the front room, he finds her staring into space. It’s been a long while since he found her in this mood: melancholy reflection would be the best descriptor.

“Ma?”

“Oh, Danny! You’re up!” and his mom is on her feet, wrapping him in a hug that makes him feel small and safe once more. “Are you hungry? Do you want some pancakes? I’ll make you some.” Danny nods and follows her into the kitchen, where she gets out the flour and eggs and blueberries and begins to fix his brunch.

“Baby, I’m so sorry this happened.”

“I know, Ma, me too.” He doesn’t want to talk about it. The appetite he thought he had was drying up rapidly, and he feels an overwhelming emptiness inside him that he can’t shut out. It’s like a heavy blanket and it smothers every other emotion. He knows what it feels like but won’t draw the comparison. His mom pushes the plate of pancakes in front of him and he begins to chew without tasting. He’s about to push them away when his message tone pings.

 **Grace-Face:** He still looks like shit.

 **Danny:** Good.

 **Grace-Face:** You don’t mean that.

He doesn’t, but he wishes he did. It would be so much easier to hate Steve to want him to suffer, but life isn’t easy and it’s just another layer of interminable pain inside him.#

 **Danny:** You’re right, I don’t. Watch out for him, okay?”

Grace returns a saluting emoji and it makes Danny smile enough to finish off the plate of pancakes. He’s finally starting to feel prepared to go back, to see Steve and to be able to manage that without embarrassing himself.

All that changes around 3pm, when he gets a call from Grace. Her voice is frantic and he can’t understand anything she says at first.

“Grace, shut up a minute! Take a breath and then tell me what the problem is.”

“It’s Steve,” she manages to gasp out.

“What about him?” Danny asks, the remaining pieces of his heart suddenly in his throat.

“The cops were here, Danny, on the field at practice. They took him away, Danny. Did you hear me? The police, they took him away!”

Danny is distantly aware of his phone slipping from his hand. He is distantly aware of Grace’s tinny voice shouting for him. He is distantly aware of his mom calling his name, over and over, before picking up the phone and talking into it. He’s distantly aware of her face growing pale and then his awareness ends. His chest tight, his vision black, Danny collapses to the floor.

It’s dark when Danny comes to properly, having been in and out of it for a few hours. Grace is curled up on the bed next to him, her hand on his stomach as though to make sure he’s breathing. Danny’s head is pounding and his mouth like the Sahara, so he lifts her hand carefully and sits up. He checks his phone first, for messages from Steve, of which there are none. He daren’t send a message—if he’s been arrested then it would likely just make everything worse. He’d deleted every other message he had, just to be on the safe side. Then he flipped through the local news channel’s web page, but there was no story about a teacher being arrested.

With nothing else to do but wait, which is what his mom had repeated over and over to him, Danny got up to grab a drink and try to get some sleep. He had to go back to school tomorrow, no matter what his mom said. He had to see if Steve was there. As he stood, he glanced out of the window to the street below. For one brief moment he thinks he sees Steve crouched in the yard across the road, but when he looks again there’s nothing there.

He must finally be going fucking nuts.


	18. Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry - this chapter isn't a lot of fun, either, but we will at least get to find out a little more about what's going on.

Danny goes to school on Friday. Honestly, he doesn’t feel like there is another choice. If someone has found out about them and reported Steve, he can’t cower at home. Inside, his heart is shredded, splashed to the walls of his chest and constricting his lungs. He hasn’t been able to draw a deep breath in what feels like forever. The breathlessness is worse when he thinks about where Steve is.

He has still managed to fight the urge to call or message Steve—despite a few close calls. Sleep, however, was more scarce after he had properly recovered from blacking out. He would feel pathetic about that reaction if he wasn’t so damn scared. Grace is an absolute gem, and as they walk to school she remains utterly silent, allowing Danny to wallow in the panic. He knows she’s watching, and she keeps tapping his paper coffee cup to make him drink a little more.

As they walk through the gates, Danny feels like everyone Is watching him. He says as much to Grace, who looks around and then calls him ‘ridiculously paranoid’ which, fair and accurate but it still hurt a little. By his locker, he searches for Steve in the corridors or heading in to his classroom but he doesn’t see him. The need to find Steve and to make sure he’s okay sits heavy in his belly and he ends up clenching his books to stay grounded and still.

“It will be okay, Danny,” Grace says, clutching his elbow tightly and drawing his attention back to her. He nods grimly.

Throughout his first two classes, Danny surrenders a little more to the agony, and both teachers ask him if he’s okay. He wonders if they know—do they know where he was nearly a week ago, buried deep in Steve’s ass? Do they know it was him? Neither adult questions him about Steve, and he manages to wave away their concerns with recovering from the flu, but it also unsettles him how easily the lies fall from his tongue. Will he be able to lie as easily if—when?—the police question him also? Will his mom? Sinking further into the darkness, Danny trudges to history.

Grace catches him outside the class but she doesn’t have her bag.

“He’s not here,” she says quietly, following him in. Danny notices her bag already on the desk and is overwhelmingly grateful for her and her efforts to protect him. He takes his seat and looks up just as Principal Grover steps in, followed by Mrs Shackleton, another teacher from the history department.

“Good morning,” Grover says. Danny misses some of the syllables because his blood pounds too loudly in his ears. The simmering panic starts to boil over but he clenches his teeth and focuses, a panic attack in _this_ class is not going to help the situation at all.

“Coach McGarrett won’t be in today, and likely not next week. So Mrs Shackleton is going to cover your class. Please help her get up to speed with where you are.”

Danny is white-knuckling the desk. This is bad: really fucking bad.

“Where is he, sir?” Grace asks, her hand in the air in a mockery of politeness. Her eyes are more on Danny though, and she seems to be taking very purposeful, deep breaths. How is he so lucky to have her?

“I’m afraid I can’t say,” Grover responds. “He’s taking some personal time.”

“But he is coming back?” she asks again, demanding, and Danny thinks it’s growing less and less likely that she will be going over to Will’s house for dinner if she continues.

“Again, I can’t say,” Grover says, looking at Danny this time. Danny feels a shiver ripple through him and the hairs on the back of his neck rise. This is all his fault. “I’m going to leave you in Mrs Shackleton’s capable hands.” Principal Grover stands up from where he’d been perched on the front of Steve’s desk and starts down the aisle between the desks. “Williams, with me,” he says quietly as he passes.

He feels sick.

Danny stands and glances at Grace, who looks decidedly flustered. It doesn’t help – she has been the rock he was resting his feet on. With a shaky foundation, he feels the clutches of fear begin to squeeze again. They step into the empty corridor, and Grover pulls the door closed behind them before looking at Danny.

“Look, I know you and Steve are close,” he begins, and Danny knows his eyes widen. “He told me that Clara asked him to watch out for you, bit of a big brother sort of deal.”

“You’ve spoken to him?” Danny interrupts, clutching at the straw. “Where is he, sir?”

“Danny. I can only tell you what he’s letting me tell you. Something has come up and he’s helping HPD for a few days. There’s a threat to the island and he has to deal with it.”

The sudden release of one fear is overwhelming but then another one grasps him just as tightly. Squeezes.

“Is he in danger?”

Principal Grover just looks at him and folds his arms over his chest. Danny can see that, even if the man does know more, he isn’t going to share it.

“Thank you for telling me. I can let my mom know now. She’s been worried.” Another easy lie, mostly because it’s grounded in truths.”

“You do that. Now, back to class, you’ve missed a lot recently.”

Danny steps back in to the classroom and takes his seat. Grace looks at him but all he can do is nod and give her a thin smile. It will have to wait until lunch, when he is going to find somewhere empty and call Steve. He has to know he’s okay. They may not be _together_ any more, but he can’t live without knowing. He wants to tell him, one more time, that he loves him. Completely.

“How many times have you tried now?” Grace asks, staring at the wide-eyed fear of Danny.

“Eleven. Eleven times. It’s just going to voicemail, Grace. What do I do?”

“They don’t know anything, no-one does. Leave a message. Maybe he’ll call back?”

Danny can’t do it, though. He needs to hear Steve, hear he’s okay. In the end, he sends a message. Then another. Then another. When the bell goes for class, he drags himself up and back into the building, but he knows today is a total learning bust. The whispering in his head keeps asking him the same question over and over and over: _What if he dies?_

**12:17**

**DANNY:** Where are you?

**12:19**

**DANNY:** Are you okay?

**12:22**

**DANNY:** I just need to know you’re okay.

**12:24**

**DANNY:** Call me back. Please.

**12:25**

**DANNY:** Steve? Please, tell me you’re okay.

**12:26**

**DANNY:** Steve?

**12:29**

**DANNY:** I love you.

At just before 2pm, Principal Grover hurries into Danny’s econ class followed by two police officers. He recognises their faces—they’ve been on the news. They look pale, eyes drawn and hands resting on the badges clipped to their belts. Both Asian, the man scans the classroom and locks eyes with Danny. Fuck. Grover whispers something to Miss Clarke, whose eyes go wide as she listens, her hands flying up to cover her mouth.

“Danny, we need you to come with us.”

Danny stands, or at least he thinks he does, because he can’t feel anything. He is numb but aware that he’s trembling. The class begins to murmur around him and Danny feels every pairs of eyes hot on his skin, his cold and clammy skin. Doesn’t look good, being escorted from class by cops.

As they step through the door, the small group all stops in the corridor.

“Danny? I’m Lieutenant Kelly, and this is my partner, Officer Kalakaua. We’re going to need you to come down to the station with us.”

“Why?” Danny whispers.

“I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of time to explain. Your mom will be meeting us there.”

“No,” Danny says, shaking his head. He knows three truths in this moment: Steve is dead, and if he isn’t, he is in grave danger, or if neither of those is true, that last message he sent has fucked everything up.

He just hopes that Steve saw it and understands, doesn’t blame him.

“Danny, you gotta go.” Principal Grover this time, a heavy hand on Danny’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, but you gotta go.”

“NO!” Danny doesn’t realise he’s shouting. Doesn’t know why he is either – he should be doing as he’s told. A fuss, a chaotic response will just make him look stupid, childish. “Tell me what the hell is going on. Please.”

Kelly and Kalakaua look at each other and he gives her a nod. “Danny,” she says softly, “we need to put you and your family in protective custody. And we need to move, now.”

Danny starts walking but he is still swirling with questions. He drags his phone from his pocket and looks again to see if Steve has responded, to see if he has replied. But there’s no message.

“Can I have a look at that?” Kelly asks. Danny holds it close to himself and shakes his head. “Has Steve contacted you?”

“No. I haven’t spoken to him since last week,” Danny says, honestly. It’s a relief to be able to say anything and know it’s completely true.

They leave the main entrance, his Principal wishing him luck, and he climbs into a black Tahoe. The windows are dark, like his heart, and he looks at his phone again, tapping out a message to his mom to let him know where he is, and to Grace. She responds with a mouth-open emoji, because she’s in class and shouldn’t be messaging at all.

“Where are we going, Officer Kalakaua?” he asks.

“Iolani Palace,” she replies, “and call me Kono, Danny, okay?” He just nods.

The finality of this is terrifying. Now he’s alone with his thoughts, alone to contemplate the meaning of all of this, he is able to truly process what he thinks is going on. Steve is in trouble and, somehow, Danny’s family is now wrapped up in it. It’s growing increasingly difficult to breathe, so Danny closes his eyes and leans his head back on the head rest. He presses his palm to his chest in a mockery of how Steve had just a short time ago, and he pushes the breaths in by sheer force of will. He’s never been able to pull himself back from a panic attack. More often than not, he’d have to ride them out until exhaustion took him, but this time he does. With his mind focused on Steve, on the feel of Steve’s hands on his skin and Steve’s mouth on his mouth, Danny pulls himself back from the brink of a panicked ending. As the car slows, he opens his eyes and sees Kono watching him. She smiles thinly and then turns her attention back to her partner.

“All clear?” she asks.

“Jerry?” Kelly asks, looking up at the building and pressing his finger to his ear. He nods and then turns to Kono. “Everything seems clear. Let’s move.”

Kono steps out of the car and spins to open his door. She holds him in front of her, and then the two move around him almost in synchrony, as they move him to a rear entrance. When they step through the door and it closes dully behind them, Kono releases a breath loudly and her whole demeanour relaxes.

Upstairs, in a huge room of glass doors and glass offices, his mom, dad and sisters are all waiting for him. Bridget looks scared, as does his mom, but Stella is just tapping away on her phone. He’s surprised they got her here so quickly from college.

“Is someone going to tell us what’s going on, now?” Clara demands, though her voice is reedy and thin. Danny hugs her then spins on his heels to face the motley crew of people before him.

“Where’s Steve? Why are we in danger?”

Kono steps forward, and Kelly (Chin Ho his brain supplies helpfully, he used to be the school’s quarterback, he knew he seemed familiar) turns away with Jerry and a couple of others that haven’t been introduced.

“About a week ago, we became aware that someone from the terrorist watch list was on the island. At the time, we thought it was something to do with other shipments we had seen coming in. However, early this week we closed in and caught a break. The man had been surveilling Steve, watching every aspect of his life.” She stops there, glancing at Danny, who swallows back a gasp. They weren’t exactly careful, not in the beginning, and he wonders what she knows—what the team knows. “In the end, we had no choice but to bring him in to the case. He knows this man very well, too well, and we needed his help to catch him.”

“Something’s gone wrong, though, hasn’t it?” Danny asks. He’s so impressed that his voice is steady, that his heart is calm, though he senses the collapse somewhere in his near future.

“I’m sorry. I can’t really say anything else. He felt that your family would be in danger, and from further intel we collected overnight, that was an accurate assessment. Unfortunately, we only pieced everything together in the last hour or we would have got you here sooner.”

“Where’s Steve?”

Kono grits her teeth and refuses to answer, face pale and anguished. Chin appears behind her.

“It’s okay, cuz,” he says gently, turning her away and gesturing towards the other team members. “We think he was taken, last night.”

“Taken?” Clara gasps, her knees collapsing. Danny’s sense memory tries to drag him down too—it’s Matt’s death all over again and he’s not sure any of them can survive this.

“Yes. From…” Chin shakes his head and then folds his arms across his chest. “From outside your house. It would seem when Steve left here yesterday he went to your house to keep watch until we could get an HPD unit in place. Sometime in the early hours, he sent me a message which made no sense at first. Jerry tracked everything back and pieced the code together. Steve saw something, or someone, and let us know what he could.”

“But he might just have followed them,” Danny says. Chin shakes his head slowly.

“He’s been out of contact for almost twelve hours.”

When darkness has truly fallen, Danny and his family are shepherded out of the back door and into a non-descript green van. Chin driving, Kono in front with him, and Adam and Lori in back with them, they drive towards the North Shore and a little house owned by some guy who seemed pretty shady and kept calling Kono and Lori _sweet and spicy_ in some ridiculous voice, but who Danny didn’t have the energy to think too much about). They hunker down for the night, left under the guard of six HPD officers after the rest of the 5-0 task force leave. All except for Kono, who stands motionless at the window and watches Saturday dawn, along with Danny and his mom, who haven’t slept at all.

Danny checks his phone again.

And again.

About an hour after sunrise, Clara goes to check on Bridget who they hear sobbing quietly from the back bedroom.

“You know, don’t you?” Danny asks, carefully not to be too loud. Kono glances over at him before returning her eyes to the road. “About me and Steve?” he prods.

“It doesn’t matter. All I know is I have to keep you safe.”

“But you do know. What will happen, after all this?”

Kono smiles at him then. “Brah, we don’t care. We’re a task force, much bigger fish to fry than …” Lost for proper words to describe the knowledge that Steve and Danny had a brief relationship, she flaps her hand around a little. “Let’s say, some of the photos that we have seen have mysteriously disappeared.”

Danny just stares at her, wide-eyed. “Steve’s good people, and he’s been through way too much crap for something like this to take him down.”

“What do you know that I don’t?” Danny asks.

Kono contemplates for a few moments what she should tell Danny, if anything, but in the end she looks him dead in the eye. “This man we’re hunting, who is also hunting you I might add, is Victor Hesse. He’s the man who killed your brother.”

As Danny’s world tilts in such a way that he thinks he might never right it properly again, the years of anger resurface in a vicious wave that swallows him whole and refuses to spit him out. Steve is out there, with the man who mercilessly killed Matt, and Danny absolutely cannot lose him in the same way. Kono watches the gamut of emotions that flood through him, writ across his face as he knows they will be, and she nods. Understands.

“He’s a good man, strong,” she says. “I’ve only known him for, like, a day, and I already know that he is going to do everything in his power to get back to you. And we are going to do our best to help him. You got it?”


	19. Suffer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has become so much more of a case-fic than I ever expected. I started out to tell a sweet little Teacher/Student AU, and it became this behemoth that clearly has a mind of its own. That said, I enjoyed writing this today and, as usual, am posting before I have proof-read because I know many of you are lovely enough to ignore my mistakes, and I will edit it over the next few days.  
> I'd love to hear your thoughts! And remember, I promised a HEA, and we will get there, the path is just a little messy along the way!
> 
> Please note that I have added some tag. Please heed them and check the notes at the end (SPOILERS) if you aren't sure if you should read on. Thank you.

Steve sits in his little hiding place and watches Danny’s house like the proverbial hawk. When he had first been shown the pictures of them together, he had appreciated them artistically, because Danny was a good-looking guy and they made a nice looking couple, too. Then his internal homophobia—years of mistreatment in the Navy to blame—took over and he panicked about what the others would think. Then his feelings morphed into something much closer to hysteria: Hesse was going to use Danny to get to him. And he simply couldn’t allow that.

Chin Ho had laughed when Steve started barking orders, and patted him on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, brah, we’ve got this.” Then it was his turn to bark the orders. And Steve had to admit, the task force seemed to have an idea what they were doing, even if they were pretty new to the game.

But Steve couldn’t wait. Once plans were in place for surveillance, CI’s were being spoken to and he had shared all the intel he was able to (as well as some he probably shouldn’t have), he said he had something to do and left. And so now here he is, sitting outside Danny’s house and praying to a god he’s not sure he believes in to help him keep the love of his life and his family safe.

Hours pass, and dawn is close to breaking when Steve begins to think it might be safe to leave. He needs to get back to Iolani Palace, as he promised Chin he would, so that he can help. The governor had been very clear that she was expecting not just his cooperation but also his assistance with this case. She kept looking at him curiously, but Steve knows they have never met before and found her scrutiny at the time subsequently unsettling. He is torn between desperately needing to ensure Danny’s safety and needing to catch the son of a bitch who is threatening it in the first place and so readily capitulated to the demands. With some reluctance, Steve slips slowly out of the small space he has inserted himself into. He doesn’t see the two masked men creeping up behind him, or the large metal club one of them is holding, until he is falling backwards and blackness is swallowing him.

When he awakes, his head pounds and nausea lingers at the back of his throat. At first, he is aware of just those two things. As seconds slowly tick by, his awareness changes, and he has to bite back fear rather than nausea. He is suspended by the wrists, his arms twisted painfully upwards so that his shoulders burn unnaturally. His whole body weight hangs and his toes are barely able to scrape the ground which feels damp and cold beneath him. His boots are missing—a revelation which comes later than it probably should. His shirt has been stripped away as well, leaving him bare-chested in the cool air. He’s definitely underground, certain he is still on O’ahu though he can’t put his finger on why.

He tries to spin around, to understand the geography of the room better. All he can see at first are earthen walls, like the space has been carved out of the ground, and there are no obvious building foundations. He takes note that the room seems to slope away from him, but with no windows to shed any natural light, other features are harder to distinguish. He draws in a deep breath which allows the nausea to surge again, but he needs the oxygen to think as well. He has to get out of here. Straining to see, he begins to make out a door at the opposite end to the slope, a metal door it seems, and it looks heavy. The burn in his shoulders and the fear of being tied and caged tries to overwhelm his training, but Steve knows he has been in similar positions before and he always made it home then. Rationally, Steve knows that Chin and Kono and the team will be looking for him. Rationally, when he was working some of the black ops jobs he did, (and can tell absolutely no-one about ever) he didn’t have that reassurance. But the emotional part of his brain keeps screaming: the military knew where to look when things went South, but this time they don’t.

Steve closes his eyes and draws on the inner strength he knows he has in order to wrestle with the uncertainty and the terror. Somewhere beyond these walls, Danny is wondering what the hell is going on. Chin and Kono will keep him safe—everything they have done for him (for them) has shown he can trust them—but while Steve is strung up like a side of beef he can’t take Hesse down so he has to do something.

It’s unclear how much time passes while Steve hangs alone, but it’s long enough that the pain in his shoulders has morphed into numbness and his breathing has shallowed. Hunger came and went early on, and now he is left fighting unconsciousness again. Eventually, he hears the thud of boots on dirt steps, the heavy turning of an industrial set of locks in the door, and the movement of at least three men behind him. He plays ‘dead’, motionless and utterly calm, not giving away that he’s dragging up reserves of strength he had long-thought lost. Fleetingly, he thinks he is glad Danny has made him run so much and helping to keep his fitness and stamina levels up, because the wallowing in misery he had been doing up to that point had been far less effective.

“McGarrett. Good to finally meet you.” The voice is warm, almost comforting, and Steve is immediately frightened. An Asian man comes around from behind him, followed by three heavies, two of whom are carrying chairs. The Asian man sits in one, his nice suit and polished shoes jarring in the dirt-room. The other chair is placed behind Steve, and two of the heavies lift his weight, unfasten him from the roof, and fasten him instead to the chair.

“Who are you?” Steve croaks. God, his mouth is dry.

“An associate of Victor Hesse. He has asked me to speak with you, to extricate certain _information_ , on his behalf.”

Steve fights the urge to roll his eyes but takes in the man’s appearance more closely. He is strong: bunched muscles fill out the arms of his jacket and cords of strength wind up his neck. He’s maybe in his early thirties, and he is deadly calm. Steve needs to stall, but there is no way he is telling this man anything.

“Might as well kill me now, _associate,_ ” Steve spits, “because I’m not going to tell you a damn thing.”

“We shall see about that,” the man says, smiling thinly. Steve thinks it is the sort of smile that is a threat and it stirs a fight or flight response he thought he had lost.

“Let’s start with something easy, shall we?” The man leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees, and steepling his fingers beneath his chin. “Victor would very much like to know where his brother’s body is. I’m sure you must have an idea where the military would take such a thing.”

Steve’s silence echoes in the room, surrounded as he is by the harsh breathing of idiots just waiting to be told they can hit something.

“Come now, Steve, this is simple! Where is Anton Hesse’s body?”

Steve remains silent.

Blood oozes from his cheek, nose and ear from where one of the heavies has been raining blows. Steve’s brain aches from the rattling it’s had, and he’s certain he will start to feel the effects of a concussion soon, but he has remained stoically closed-mouthed. Of course he knows where Anton’s body is, but give them that piece and they’ll want the whole pie. The Asian man—his name is Wo Fat, Steve has learned during the ‘interrogation’, and it’s more than Wo Fat has learned from Steve—has since taken over, and the cattle prod is leaving circular burns in its wake. Steve has shut out most of the pain, but he cries out occasionally when he cannot push it away quickly enough. When that happens, Wo Fat smiles again and strikes the same spot. Between every few prods, he will ask the same question again, but still Steve hasn’t spoken. Now, though, he notices a change in Wo Fat’s face, and he knows that his silence is going to be punished more.

“We have all the time in the world, McGarrett,” he sneers. Two of the heavies lift Steve from the chair and rehang him from the roof, his shoulders once again stretched beyond normal endurance. Steve thinks he feels the muscles tear as his weight is dropped and he screams silently. “I’ll be back, eventually.”

One of the other men offers Steve bottled water, which he drinks greedily. There is no point in refusing as they would likely force him to drink it anyway. Plus, he needs it if he is going to survive this.

Not for the first time, he wonders if the task force have any ideas at all where they will find him.

He wonders if they are even looking, but knows that is fed by his own insecurities about his worth in the world and he struggles to push the idea back in to the box it came from.

As the door behind him locks, he slumps, feeling unconsciousness trying to take him again, and this time he is powerless to stop it.

Steve feels the temperature drop again. It’s not much, but when you’re half naked, bloody and sweaty, you can’t miss a few degrees. It must be night, he reasons, because there is no other reason for it. He is hungry, starving in fact, and he recognises this is his body’s way of telling him it has nothing more to give. Hours have passed and he is still alone. Maybe this is it? The end of the line. He has come close so many times before, with Matt paying the ultimate price last time. But there’s no one else to die in his place this time. Steve’s emotions are a little confusing. Part of him is relieved that this may be over, and he can stop feeling guilty about Matt’s death. He knows that’s irrational, but emotions aren’t rational things, so he just accepts it. Part of him is grateful for the time he’s had with Danny, no matter how short, because he finally feels like he’s lived. Danny! He’s heartbroken that he didn’t get to tell Danny that he loved him one more time. But if Hesse and Wo Fat have him now, they have no need of Danny, and that is some comfort. Steve dangles a little longer, feels his breathing become more laboured. In this position, he is going to slowly suffocate. He wonders if it will be painless, like a gentle falling asleep, or if he’s going to end up fighting it and making it worse for himself. Neither matters much, because the outcome will be the same.

Steve passes out. But when he wakes, things are different. His shoulders are no longer screaming at him, and he has a stunning view of the ceiling. His chest hurts, though, and he’s fairly certain there are a couple of broken bones.

“He’s awake.” A soft voice, Chinese, and then some clattering. Looming over him comes Wo Fat’s sadistic face.

“Ah, good. Thank you doctor.” He dismisses the older gentleman with a wave and he shuffles away. Something in his eyes makes Steve feel dreadfully sad. “You thought we would just let you die? We still need you to talk, Steve, so we are going to keep you around as long as it takes. So, where is Anton Hesse’s body?”

Steve closes his eyes and bites back desperate tears. The ribs, the overwhelming thirst, the searing headache: they resuscitated him. He knows that the human body can’t go through that too many times, but once is more than he was hoping for. His heart aches. Danny’s face swims into his mind and he swallows drily. He can’t give in, because it risks too many other lives, but he has absolutely no control over his own. He fights to open his eyes again and tries to speak, but his mouth is too dry and all he can manage is a hoarse cough. Wo Fat gestures somewhere behind Steve, and suddenly a bottle of water is being pressed against his lips. He drinks and breathes erratically through the pain in his chest. When he’s done he lies back and gasps for air before turning his gaze to Wo Fat, who is looking decidedly smug.

“I don’t know,” Steve manages to croak, “And if I did, there’s no way I would ever tell you. So you may as well just let me die.”

Wo Fat steps back so that his face is more shadowed, and looks pensive. Thoughtful almost.

“I’ll just need to find something else to motivate you. Nails? Teeth?” He pauses, for dramatic effect Steve guesses, but all it does is help Steve to lose concentration altogether. He is near delirious and knows that he can barely finish a thought let alone transfer it into sentence. “Perhaps that little blonde boy? He seems like he might get your attention. Or you could just tell me what I want, Steve. Why should he suffer for you? Why should you suffer either?”

Steve refuses to react, remains still and breathes evenly. Inside he’s screaming.

Danny.

Danno!

_______________________________

Three days Danny and his family sit in the safe house, but when Monday night comes around he can tell the news is not good. Chin and Kono call the family together and explain they’re going to let them go home.

“They’ve all disappeared,” Chin explains gravely. “Hesse, any of his contacts, even the cars they were using, everything has just disappeared. We have no reason to believe that you are in any danger. They seem to have what they want.”

“You mean Steve?” Danny asks, though the words are as empty as he feels now. He may still be a kid, but he knows the statistics. 48 hours after disappearing, the chances are tiny that you will reappear. His heart hurts. He expects the blackened edges of panic to seep in, but he remains utterly calm. He wonders if this is what acceptance feels like?

“Yes. Hesse has Steve. The military have taken over the investigation, though we continue to support. I’ve been told to warn you that Lieutenant Rollins will likely be in contact. We have shared with her everything we thought was important, including why Steve was important to your family.”

“Is,” Clara interrupts, “ _Is_ important. Until we know something definite I choose to believe that he’s coming home.” Danny grabs his mom’s hand and squeezes. His dad glances over and then turns to the task force.

“So we’re just going home, to get on with life as though none of this madness happened? Steve’s like a son to us, like a brother to the kids, and you want us to just go home?” (Danny is mightily impressed that no-one seems to react when his dad calls Steve a ‘brother’, especially with some of the photos he knows Chin, Kono and the others have seen.)

“No, we are going to leave a unit on the house, someone will be at the school to keep an eye out for trouble, but we thought you would be more comfortable at home. There’s been no sign of any threat.”

Chin stands and shakes Eddie’s hand. “We are working to bring him home. I promise we will do everything we can.”

From there it’s another whirlwind of activity. The Williams family is taken home, and Danny is back in his kitchen eating his mom’s spaghetti for a late dinner. The idea of going back to school tomorrow is terrifying, but it also feels as though this might all be an awful nightmare he can wake from. Maybe when he goes in tomorrow, Steve will be at the front of the classroom, looking all hurt and sad like the last time he saw him.

“Danny?”

“Sorry, Ma,” he says, realising she has been trying to catch his attention.

“You got everything done for school, or you need a note for your homework?”

“I would think Principal Grover has let the faculty know what happened. I think they’ll let me off.”

Danny absentmindedly stirs the noodles around in his bowl for a while longer, before asking to be excused. His mom nods, and he drifts upstairs. He finds himself sitting on his bedroom floor, head in his hands, sobbing. The idea that Steve is dead is fucking terrifying, but the idea that what is happening to Steve is much worse than death just won’t be shaken. His mind keeps showing him images of Steve bound, beaten, bloodied and broken, and Danny’s stomach keeps roiling at the images. Steve is strong, brave but also a little lost. Will he survive torture by an international terrorist? Shit! Probably not!

His phone dings with a message. For a split second he truly believes that it will be Steve, but he knows a heartbeat later that it is probably never going to be Steve again.

 **Grace** : How you holding up? Any news?

 **Danny:** They let us home. No news.

 **Grace:** What can I do?

**Danny:**

He waits for inspiration to strike, the empty message left open for long minutes. Grace will be growing impatient, but he has no words. What can anyone do? The man he loves is missing—presumed dead, if he’s honest about reading between the lines of what he has been told by so many people—and he feels like his heart is dying.

 **Danny:** I’ll see you tomorrow, Grace-Face.

He climbs onto his bed and stares out the window into the cloudless night. He can’t cry anymore, the tears all dried up, and so instead he focuses on pushing hope out into the universe that they manage to find something or someone who can get to Steve.

Everyone is staring at him. He knows that the story of him being taken on Friday by the Governor’s task force will have spread like wildfire, but still, the staring is unnerving. He guesses that having Officer ‘call me Pua’ Kai following him around isn’t really helping either.

“Hey, Danny,” Grace says as he comes alongside her. She grabs him into a hug and he feels the desperate sadness swell suddenly within. He buries his face into her shoulder and sucks in a handful of deep, shaky breaths to try and push back the panic and the terror. “You look fucking awful,” she says, and she means it sympathetically even is Pua raises an eyebrow.

“Thanks, babe,” Danny says, but he is smiling and he knows that’s what she was aiming for. “Just gotta make it through the day, y’know?” Grace squeezes his hand and then glances behind him.

“Principal Grover,” she calls, and smiles politely.

“Grace, good to see you. Danny?” Grover turns to Danny. “How are you holding up?” Danny looks at his principal and realises that he is suffering too. Steve had told Danny that Grover was a friend, but Danny hadn’t realised how close they were.

“I’ll be okay, Sir. Are you okay?”

“It’s all just a little difficult to accept, isn’t it?” Grover asks wearily. He introduces himself to Danny’s police escort and then tells Danny to come see him if he has any problems at all. “Kids can be cruel, Danny. So you need anything, you tell me.” He squeezes Danny’s shoulder before he heads back down the corridor.

The first two classes pass fairly easily, and Danny manages to stay somewhat focused on the work, because he knows that’s what Steve would want. But history class is a whole different matter. Steve’s absence is painfully noticeable, and the other kids keep looking at him like they want to ask but have been told they can’t. Kono told him that none of what had happened was a secret, that he didn’t have to pretend anything was classified, but that if he wanted to say it was to help him out then she didn’t mind. At the time, Danny didn’t know why she was telling him, but it was painfully obvious now. After almost ten minutes of whispers and staring, Danny breaks. He turns around to glare, and catches Grace’s worried face in the process.

“Right? You want to ask, so ask, because I’m getting super sick of all this!” Danny gestures at the classroom and tries hard not to curse in front of the teacher. She raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t tell him to be quiet, and he figures she wants to know as much as the kids do.

“Erm, do you know where Coach is?” asks Miller, one of the team and the kid who always sits at the back and does fuck all unless forced to. But Danny knew he tried harder in Steve’s class, that he wanted to impress his coach.

“No,” Danny sighs, “nobody does. Which is the problem.”

“But he was taken away by the police and then . . . and then you were. So what’s going to?”

“Miller, that’s intrusive,” the teacher chides, but she clearly leaves it open for Danny to answer if he wants. Danny pauses, unsure what—if anything—he wants to say.

“Steve was my brother’s best friend, right?” he says, and many of the class nod while Grace’s eyes fill with tears. God, he loves her to pieces. “So, something from Steve’s army days has followed him home and he went to help the task force out because the governor wanted him to. Only, now he’s missing. They thought someone might come after my family as well but no-one did, so here I am. Happy?”

“Will you tell us, if you hear anything?” asks Lucy, a little blonde thing who had been one of Grace’s friends when they were in the Aloha Girls.

“If I can,” Danny says with a shrug.

He turns back to the desk and his books but he isn’t seeing the words. He just feels the collective worry in the room weighing on him. It’s debilitating. He can’t finish a thought, he can’t see past the tears burning in his eyes, and he just wants to disappear. But Steve would be devastated if he knew that Danny was giving up. He rubs at his eyes, not caring if anyone else sees, and picks up his pen. He is going to work hard, he is going to graduate, and Steve is going to come home—not necessarily in that order.

Pua says he can go to practice if he wants, and so Danny does. The pain of training after so long is welcomed and the burning in his muscles helps to drown out the screaming in his heart. He runs and throws and jumps and sprints and just switches his head off. It works, for most of the session, but as the end of the session becomes a tangible thing Danny feels the agony of loss fill him again slowly, until his limbs are like lead and his brain is confused and tired again. Coach wishes him well, tells him he worked hard, but Danny can see really he just wants to ask about Steve. Does everyone think he has inside knowledge? But of course he does, and so Danny just accepts the looks.

Barely keeping it together, he showers and dresses and steps out of the changing rooms. Pua is still there, an ever present reminder that Steve is missing, and they head towards the patrol car that Chin had insisted would have to take him to and from school for a few days until they were certain he was safer. At least he gets to sit up front, not behind the barricade like some criminal.

Danny’s life is one of extremes. The overwhelming love he feels for Steve and the devastating loss of now having him anymore. The mundane normality of school against three days of police custody. The way he belongs to his family but feels separate from them as they each deal with Matt’s loss in a different way. Extremes. He is beginning to lose himself, is beginning to forget who he is, and in his brain’s foggy state he fails to see the truck before it slams into the side of the car. Pua’s head bounces sickeningly off the steering wheel and Danny feels the spurt of blood from his own head as it smacks into the door frame. The car’s alarm blares distantly and Danny realises that hot, heavy hands are dragging him from the car and into the back of the van. As he sinks into the relief of unconsciousness, he thinks that this is just exactly how this weird day should have ended.

________________________________

When Danny awakes, his head pounds and nausea lingers at the back of his throat. At first, he is aware of just those two things. As seconds slowly tick by, his awareness changes, and he has to bite back fear rather than nausea. He is suspended by the wrists, his arms twisted painfully upwards so that his shoulders burn unnaturally. His whole body weight hangs and his toes are barely able to scrape the ground which feels damp and cold beneath him. His sneakers are missing—a revelation which comes later than it probably should. His shirt has been stripped away as well, leaving him bare-chested in the cool air. He’s definitely underground.

“Danno?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS ** SPOILERS ** SPOILERS **
> 
> Seriously, reading this will ruin the chapter, so if you are unsure about the tag changes please only read on if you understand that the dramatic reveals in the chapter will be spoiled. Okay? Good, thanks.
> 
> Steve is physically tortured and, while this is unpleasant, the detail isn't too graphic. However, if you are unsure, you could miss the majority of this chapter understanding that this has happened and that the task force have no idea where he is.


	20. Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a little more whump in here, but we are getting towards some far more pleasant things. Just got to get out of this predicament our boys are in. Thank you for staying along for the ride. My sweet little student/teacher romance took a rather dark turn, and I'm sorry for that because it isn't what you signed up for, but this is what you get when you don't plot out a story and just let your muse write! So, yeah, thanks, because it means a lot that people stick around for what I write.

“Danno?”

Danny’s eyes flicker open again and, this time, he is able to fix his gaze on the man hanging before him.

“Thank fuck!” Steve’s expletive is more gasp than spoken word, but the emotion is clear.

“Steve?”

“Danno. Danno! How the hell’d you end up here?”

Danny searches his brain for what had happened before, but all he finds is blackness. “Don’t remember,” he groans and then swallows back the bile rising in his throat. He’s had concussion once before, and this feels exactly as shitty. “Where are we?” he asks.

“Not sure. Still on the island, I’m even more certain of that now that you’re here, but I don’t know where. Danno?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“What . . . what day is it?”

Steve’s embarrassed that he’s forgotten this, that he couldn’t keep track of that piece of information. He’s filthy, soiled and wet from his time hanging and suffering and dying, but he isn’t embarrassed about that. No. It’s the loss of the days that’s bothering him. The former he has zero control over, and even though sitting in his own shit every time they slam him into that goddamn chair is fucking awful, he knows the smell is worse for them. The latter, though? The latter he should have managed better, should have been able to do. They have taken away his ability to process and control, and it’s the worst thing they could have done. Or at least he thought so, until they dragged Danny into the room and strung him up. Right in that moment he thought he had died and ended up in some purgatory somewhere for his sins. Then he thought Danny was dead as he had hung lifelessly for what had seemed like forever in this strange half-world he feels like he’s in. And now he’s trying hard not to accept the realisation that Danny’s life is in his hands. His decisions affect them both now. How the hell did this become his life again? Turns out running away didn’t change anything. Who knew Mary would be right?

“When I . . . oh god, there was a crash! Pua was driving. It was Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon.”

“A car crash? Who’s Pua?” Steve’s one working eye is wide, and he starts to search Danny for more injuries. What if there’s internal bleeding? There’s no way to see that now. Oh, god!

“HPD,” Danny manages to croak. He’s starting to lose control over the wisps of thought and memory in his mind, his eyes and straining to pick out the features on Steve’s face because they’re all blurred up and there’s just the vague outline of his battered and abused body hanging. Like his own, he imagines. He wades through fuzzy memories of before, strange and unpleasant odours of now, and comes out the other side feeling worse than he did but a little clearer on the hows and whys. He knows that it’s likely been a few hours, because he was knocked out cold and it takes time to come back from that, right? So maybe it’s Wednesday now, early hours.

“Danny?” Steve calls, begs almost, desperate for Danny to come back to him again. And he will. He’s just so damned tired, and everything aches. Like the flu only there’s patches of sticky, drying blood on at least two parts of his body.

“I’m here,” he manages. He flights with exhausted eyelids and forces himself to focus. Steve looks like death. Beneath the bruises and the blood, his skin is pale, and one shoulder seems to hang at a strange and unsettling angle. “Gotta say, you don’t look good, babe,” he says, mangling the sounds in places but clear enough that Steve manages to cough out a laugh.

“Sure, well, a few days of torture will do that to a guy.”

“Are you okay?”

“No, Danny, no. I’m not. And it’s sick, but I’m really glad you’re here, and fucking devastated that you are. I thought . . .”

“What?” Danny prompts when Steve seems to forget the end of his sentence. Or maybe it’s just hard to find the words.

“I thought you were a hallucination and that maybe I was losing my damn mind, but now you’re talking to me and I think maybe you’re real. Are you?”

“Yes, Steve. I’m real. I’m here.” Danny tries to smile but one side of his face is thick with dried blood and it’s tight. Steve tries to smile back, but with one swollen eye and bruises that bloom across both cheekbones, it’s clear the action is less than pleasant.

“What do they want, Steve?”

Steve tells him. About Anton Hesse’s body, about Wo Fat, and about how they’ve hurt him—over and over and over again. He doesn’t hide anything, because Danny will know he hasn’t told him everything, and because Danny—his beautiful, innocent Danno—needs to know what is coming. He needs to be prepared.

“What will happen if you tell them where the body is?”

“It puts people in danger, Danny, but if I give them that then they are going to want more. More information. It won’t ever end.”

Danny’s eyes drift down Steve’s chest to the deep purple bruises on his rib cage from where someone had been over-enthusiastic about the CPR before Steve had been medically revived. He doesn’t drift lower—he can smell what it’s been like for Steve trapped in here for days. Each bruise is like an agonising shard striking through his own chest. Steve has been here for days, suffering and alone. If they survive this, how do they forget it? How does Steve move on?

“Hey, Danny? It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay, babe, you’re all busted up.”

“I’ve had worse,” Steve says wryly. Shuttered images of explosions and firefights and compounds in the desert ricochet through his brain and he pushes them back with what minute amount of strength he has left. He can’t lose focus now.

Danny watches the internal battle for control as Steve’s emotions flash across his face, darkening his eye or twisting his mouth sourly.

“You weren’t just a regular sailor, were you?” Danny asks, the realisation coming to him in sudden sharp bursts. “Matty either?”

Steve shakes his head gently, though it clearly pains him. “No. Military intelligence. We were recruited right out of training. Our CO told us we had tremendous potential. He was _not_ happy when I left.”

“I can imagine. You were an expensive investment.” The military were all about money, weren’t they?   
“I’d lost others, Danny, but after Matty I just couldn’t do it again. Not again.”

“Hey! Hey, it’s okay. I get it. You don’t need to explain anything to me, Steve. But what now.”

“I can’t—” Tears are rolling down Steve’s face and he’s staring at Danny in such a way that makes Danny’s heart break into a million angry fragments. These bastards knew this would change things. Steve will take anything they give, but what they’re likely going to do to Danny? That’s going to break him.

Danny is Steve’s ultimate weakness.

And this bastard Wo Fat knows that.

“You can’t tell them anything, babe, nothing at all. I’m guessing we’re talking about putting lots of people in danger, am I right?” Danny waits for Steve’s miserable nod. “Right, so you say nothing.”

“They’re going to hurt you, Danny. The things they did to me, those things are going to kill you.”

“And if that happens,” Danny interrupts softly, “if the governor’s task force don’t show up and rescue us in a blaze of glory, then you let it happen. Steve, look at me!” Danny’s voice is louder now, fervent. “I will **not** be the reason that more people die. Do you get that?”

“Danno—”

“Steve. Promise me.”

“I’ll try.”

“No trying. You can’t give them anything.”

Steve is still silently crying and Danny joins him, their tears leaving bloody streaks over bruises.

“I love you,” Steve says. “I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“I know.” Danny is losing feeling in his hands completely now and he tries to wiggle his fingers.

“So what happens now?”

“It’s been a couple of hours. They’ll be back soon to take me down, strap me to a chair. Stops me from suffocating to death—they don’t like that much.”

Danny shivers. The thought of watching Steve die is terrifying and sickening, and suddenly an awful reality he never imagined that he would have to face until they were ancient men living in some beautiful beach front house and enjoying their last views of the ocean.

“And to me?”

“I don’t know. But, I think they’re going to hurt you a lot, and quickly, to try and shock me into speaking.”

“You close your eyes, and you focus on something else. I’ll . . . I’ll try to be quiet.”

Steve turns to the side and promptly retches, coughing up bile, the thought of Danny trying to be quiet through torture suddenly just way too much for him to take in.

“Steve! Steve! Are you okay?”

Steve spits a couple times, then turns back to Danny. Pounding footsteps and metal locks resound behind him and he shudders.

“It’s time, Danny.”

Steve wants more time. Time to try and prepare Danny in some way but he also knows that there’s nothing he can do. They years of training and experience still haven’t made this time any less agonising, so there’s likely little he could do to help Danny. He’s just got to hope that Danny’s write, and somewhere out there, Chin and his team are working on an extraction plan.

Danny’s pretty certain that both his nose and cheekbone are broken, and he knows he’s swallowed way more blood than in healthy. He can’t hear out of his left either, but that’s to be expected. At first, he had counted the blows to the left side of his face, as a way to try and detach himself from what was happening (it was something he’d seen in a movie, which is ridiculous in hindsight, but he had little else to work with). But after the twentieth hit, the pain and the blood became too much and he lost focus. Now? Now he’s humming a ridiculous kid’s nursery rhyme, something he and Matt used to change the words to in order to make it dirty, and he keeps chuckling to himself.

To his credit, Steve has remained painfully quiet. He didn’t try to stop Wo Fat or the heavy hitting him, and he didn’t beg for it to happen to him instead, and Danny is really impressed. Because if it was the other way around, he knows he wouldn’t be that strong. But Danny knows he has watched every single blow as it’s landed, taking the pain visually, punishing himself for it ending up this way no doubt. Because that’s Steve all over. Danny chuckles again and then spits a glob of bloody mucus from the back of his throat.

Wo Fat turns to Steve and grabs his chin, holding his face toward Danny.

“This is your fault, McGarrett,” he hisses, but Danny just stares deeply into Steve’s eye and tries to push every ounce of love he has for the man out for him to see. And he thinks Steve gets it. He certainly isn’t talking.

“Steve, it’s such a simple thing. Tell me where the body is and we can let lover-boy here go.”

“Steve can’t help the bitter laugh that escapes him, but tries to mask it with a cough.

“Lover boy?” Danny scoffs. “That the best you got?”

The idiot who’s been hitting him smacks him, open palm, and Danny stretches out his jaw. He’s angry. So full of anger that it bubbles up, surging through his blood until he can’t think straight anymore.

“He’s not going to tell you anything, moron!” he spits at Wo Fat, who smirks smugly at his outburst. But Danny can’t see past the anger and he just seethes.

“Oh, I think he will, Danno. I think he will because he isn’t going to let me kill you.”

“You really believe that?”

“I know it. For what it’s worth, he really does seem to love you despite—” Wo Fat pauses and gestures at Danny in a withering kind of way.

“Despite what? I’m I too haole for your tastes?”

Wo Fat laughs, surprisingly joyful. “No, not too haole, too male. And too young.”

“Bet if I was a blonde chick, you wouldn’t be saying fuck about my age,” Danny sneers, and he catches a small smile on Steve’s lips before he swallows it back.

“What do you think he sees in you?” Wo Fat asks. Danny ponders for a moment whether Wo Fat actually wants to know, if it’s genuine interest in his tone, or whether this is part of his plan to unpick Steve until his secrets just come tumbling out.

But Danny also realises in these moments of wondering that this might be his last chance to tell Steve everything about how he feels.

“I don’t know what he sees in my, mother-fucker, but I know what I see in him. Steve is strong—stronger than you realise and that’s going to bite you in the ass—and brave. And he loves so completely that it just sucks you in. When you are in his focus, the whole world disappears, and you are the only thing that matters to him, the only thing he can focus on. And he has this way of whispering the way he feels in your ear, when you’re so overwhelmed by him, that it feels like he’s whispering into your very soul. Everything’s on fire, the whole place could be ashes around you, but the only thing you can hear and feel is him. You ever had that kind of love before? Because all this would suggest you were totally not held enough as a kid.”

Wo Fat strides over and smashes his clenched fist into Danny’s jaw. The pain forks out and across his face, down his neck and into his very spine. Danny sucks in a couple of angry, frantic breaths, and then looks up into Wo Fat’s less-smug face and laughs.

“Strike a nerve, did I?” He laughs again.

Wo Fat just hits him a couple more times and then storms out of the room, his heavy following him. As the locks clank closed and the footsteps disappear above them, Steve just stares at Danny.

“I love you, but you are fucking insane,” Steve whispers. Then he looks around him.

“They didn’t hang us back up.”

“So,” Danny says, turning away to cough out another mouthful of blood and saliva.

“They have never left me down,” Steve marvels. “You really got under his skin.”

Steve starts to look around again. There has to be a way out. There has to be something he can do to rescue Danny, and himself, because this is new. A change.

Danny watched Steve’s military brain kick in as he starts to look around and he’s is impressed. After everything he’s been though in the last few days, Danny is overwhelmed by his ability to think straight. He is fighting for his life and, despite the situation, Danny is just ever so slightly turned on. Steve starts to rock his chair and Danny knows, he knows right there in that instant, Steve is going to do whatever it takes to get them both out of here. If they make it, or if they go down in a hail of bullets trying, Danny wouldn’t choose anything different.

___________________________________________________________________

“Kono, what the hell happened?”

“Don’t know, cuz. Pua remembers talking with Danny and then nothing.”

“Shit.”

Behind them, as they survey the crash site, Chin hears the rest of his team frantically making calls, demanding things of the officers around them and speaking to witnesses. Three hours behind already. He gathers the team around the back of his car and waits as they feedback what they’ve managed to uncover. Traffic cam footage that lasts a good while, and then just ends where the road branches in what seems like a hundred different directions (but is really only about five), witnesses who contradict each other about the number of people and their ethnicity, rain which fell almost immediately after and washed away vital evidence, and a kid missing—presumably taken by an international terrorist—who was supposed to be under their care.

Steve is going to kill him.

Danny isn’t really a kid, though. Chin had gotten to know him pretty well over the last few days and, though his rational mind knows that Danny is only seventeen, talking to him showed him some of what Steve saw. Not in the same way—he loves his wife rather a lot thank you very much—but he can see the strength and the focus that Steve must also see. Danny isn’t going to just roll over, he’s going to fight, and Chin takes comfort in the fact that hopefully this will give them more time.

They are going to need it.

“What next?” Kono asks. She’s still green, and although she packs a mean punch, she’s still learning the ropes of detective work.

“We gotta go back to HQ, unpick every piece of Intel we have and try to work out where they might have gone to ground.

“What if they aren’t even on the island anymore?” Jerry asks. He sounds defeated.

“We have no evidence to suggest they’ve left, and everything is locked down tight. We work the evidence.”

“What about Danny’s family?”

“We have to bring them back in. Though, it’s all a little too late, isn’t it?” Chin berates himself.

“We’ll find them, cuz,” Kono soothes.

“Of course we will.”

Chin’s cell rings and he glances at the caller ID: the Governor. He shows the team and then steps away to take the call while they pack up to regroup at the Palace.

“Governor,” he greets, his voice calm.

“What happened?”

Chin debriefs her with what they know and he hears her sharp intake of breath when he says they lost Danny.

“What leads do you have?”

“Not a lot, yet, but we’re going to run down what we have.”

She lets him sign off, but with a warning. If they lose Danny—and she means permanently, not like they have now—the task force is done. They can’t have the death of a child on their hands.

Chin wants to argue that Danny isn’t a kid, but he knows there’s little point right now. Instead, he climbs in behind the wheel of his car and drives on autopilot, his mind racing through all the awful things he can think of that might be happening to Steve and Danny.

___________________________________________________________________

Steve holds Danny in his arms, ignoring the screaming agony that is the muscle he has clearly damaged in his shoulder. He bends down, and presses his lips to Danny’s own. Their kiss is hot, dry and bloody – neither cares.

“We getting out of here or what?” Danny asks gently. Steve kisses him again, running his fingers over all the patches of un-bruised skin he can find.

“Yeah, babe,” he finally whispers. “You ready?”

Danny nods, grasping the wooden chair leg in his hand.

Steve takes up his post near the door, though he thinks they may have some time to wait. Danny is nestled behind him, one hand on Steve’s hip to reassure them both that each is still there and present. He knows what his role is, knows what he might have to do, and struggles to find the strength within him. He’s never asked himself if he thought he could kill a man, but he knows now that he can—to save his life or that of someone he loves. Steve glances back and smiles, his bad eye slowly beginning to reopen.

“Love you,” he says, as though he needs to keep saying it to remind them both.

But Danny knows.

“Love you too, babe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments feed a poor, egotistical writer's soul, but so do recommendations. It would be lovely if you shared this with other fans, maybe on tumblr etc. if you feel like you can.
> 
> If not, just know that your time is the most precious gift you can give me, and I appreciate it more than anything else.
> 
> Thank you.


	21. Partners

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be the very first to admit that I am not the best at writing action sequences of any kind - it's why I tend to stick to porn lol! - so please be forgiving with this chapter. I've tried something a little different with it and so I hope that it all makes sense. I had a lot of fun playing with it, so I'd really love to hear your opinions. And for those who might be avoiding parts of this story, the violence is not very explicit in this (at least I don't think so) so I think you will probably be okay. But feel free to ask first, if you aren't sure. Enjoy!

**_“We aren’t going to have much time when the door opens, Danno, okay? So we have to get this right first time.”_ **

Danny crouches behind Steve, just inside the door, and waits. His legs are stiff, cramping almost from the hunched position he waits in. But he’s following his instructions to the letter. He is Steve’s back-up, seemingly the only back-up they’re going to get, and he is damn well going to get this right. Steve waits too, pressed against the wall, his bad shoulder still slumped lower but he has some movement and that’s reassuring.

Steve feels good to be standing, even if his shoulder hurts and he’s so hungry he feels lightheaded. Weakness isn’t an option right now. He has to get Danny out of here: Clara will never forgive him if he doesn’t. And this is all Steve’s fault, of course, so he has to make it right. His grip tightens on the makeshift weapon. Every fibre of his being wants to wrap Danny in his arms and try to fucking tunnel their way out of this—quite literal—shit hole, but they can’t do that. If his plan doesn’t work, if Danny gets hurt, he thinks it might kill him. And yet, if they had stayed, Danny would probably be killed anyway. This way he has some control, doesn’t he? He has some chance to save them. For Matt.

**_“Just tell me what to do and I can do it. We have to get out of here right?”_ **

They hear the footsteps first. Steve turns ever so slightly more towards the door and listens, intense concentration masking the pain Danny knows he must be in. When he’s certain, he glances back at Danny and lifts three fingers. Three men. One will likely be Wo Fat and Danny feels his abject terror as deeply as his very bones. But he can’t let it get to him because he can’t fuck up.

Danny thinks three is manageable. Their plan works better with three, but Wo Fat is a mean bastard and he won’t go down easy. There are hushed voices now, on the other side of the doorway, muttering in something which sounds like Korean. Jingling keys. Clanking of locks. Steve glances at him, once and quickly, and Danny knows it’s meant to be reassuring, but Danny doesn’t miss the controlled fear behind his eyes (of which he can now at least see most of both). Danny’s hand starts to tremble and he swallows drily. This is it. This is it.

**_“We do. The door is going to act a bit like a funnel, so that controls how many people can get in here at one time. Up close, it’s hard to use a firearm, so it’s going to be messy and hand-to-hand.”_ **

The door begins to swing open. Just like they planned, Steve grabs the first man to step through the door and throws him downwards, as though towards Danny’s feet. It’s like slow-motion, the mountain of a man in stupidly tight black shirt stumbling towards the ground, the two bottles of water he was carrying flying forward in the air like plastic torpedoes. Danny’s breathing stops and so does his heart for just a few seconds.

Steve already has his hands around the next man, shoving him backwards into the third to control both entries into the room. Danny is pretty sure he can hear Steve calling his name and that gets him. He looks at the man in front of him who now has his hands and knees beneath him, pushing himself back up. Danny has to react. He has to do it now.

**_“Right, I can do that. I’ve been in a fair few fights, unfortunately.”_ **

Mimicking the action Steve had shown him, Danny firsts brings the chair leg upwards, striking the man’s face as it falls, and smearing blood and cartlidge over the surface. Danny lifts the chair leg up again, this time slamming it down as hard as he can, shredded end straight into the man’s neck, just where spine meets skull. Danny feels the impact sting through his arms and into his shoulders at the same time as he hears the sickening crunch of wood smashing into delicate tissue and bones. The man just slumps back to the earth and is dreadfully still. Danny has killed a man. He wants to vomit. Or scream. Or cry. Then he suddenly feels a wave of calm.

Matt had explained it once, called it the ‘him or me’ effect. He was right, though at the time Danny had not understand how he could be so calm about it. Danny isn’t calm so much as resolved. It was him or Danny, and Danny chose himself. It was the ultimate act of selfishness, but he’s is resigned to it. He wants to live, and so he had to take this life. He grits his teeth together and looks up from the man—corpse—at his feet.

**_“With trained killers?”_ **

**_“Well, no, obviously.”_ **

Steve has two chair legs, each a shattered mess at one end from where they had severed them from the seats they were attached to. He strikes out at the two men descending on him at the same time. The taller one slams a fist into the side of Steve’s face and Danny winces, even as Steve gets the chair leg around the taller man’s head and smacks it hard enough that Danny hears the echo in the room. The other man—shorter, more stout, malevolent eyes—draws a blade from a holster at the back of his belt. He thrusts at Steve, aiming for the kidneys, but Steve slams the second chair leg down on the knife-man’s wrist and the blade clatters to the floor and slides over to where Danny is still pressed against the earthen wall. He doesn’t let himself think just grabs it.

Steve’s shoulder isn’t going to take much of this, but neither is his face, so there’s that. He is aware at first that Danny is frozen, but he seems to react when he calls his name, and then there are two men on him and there’s nothing he can do for Danny. He strikes out—once, twice, three times—and manages to smash the wooden leg into the face of the taller of the two goons. Another awareness: none of these men is Wo Fat. Knife! Steve crashes a chair leg into the forearm of the little dude, and sees Danny grab it when it somehow glides across the floor towards him.

**_“I’ve only ever seen three other men with Wo Fat, but I think it’s safe to assume that if he brings three men back in here with him, there are probably as many again out there, because if there were three men here when they grabbed you that must mean there are more.”_ **

There are three bloodied bodies on the floor which Steve has dangled above for days, and he wants to feel something other than a slightly displaced anger and an air of desperation. Danny is shaking when Steve takes his hand and checks him over. Danny just nods and Steve presses the lightest of kisses to Danny’s forehead. A promise? A thank you? Danny decides it’s a tether, something to keep him together when every part of him wants to splinter apart into terrified and exhausted fragments.

Steve is reassured that Danny doesn’t seem to have hit hysteria or paralysing terror as of yet, and he tugs them towards the door once he has divested Wo Fat’s men of any weapons they are carrying. He pauses, listening again, but he can’t hear a thing. There is a set of steep, dirt steps leading upwards and another door. From where he is, it’s barely a set of wooden slats nailed together, so it’s going to provide neither resistance nor protection. Pressing Danny behind him, he ascends the steps, pressing himself against the wall as much as he can. Leaving behind the oppressive heat and stench of the room is almost overwhelming. Steve’s going to need so much therapy after this: after all, avoiding this shit is why he left the army in the first place.

**_“So even if we get out of this fucking hole in the ground, it’s not going to be over?”_ **

Rationally, Danny knows that they are safer now than they’ve been for a while, but he is still terror-stricken. He’s pretty sure he’s seen how these things end in all the movies, and the heroes always make it. But this isn’t a movie, not some stupid story, and he is painfully aware that past that crappy looking door there are more huge men who know more ways to kill him than he is likely ever to know. Steve’s hand around his is warm and sticky with sweat and blood but it’s the best thing ever in this moment.

Steve reaches the door and glances repeatedly out through the slats, before pressing himself sharply back against the wall and out of the reach of the slivers of light which squeeze themselves through. At least they have an idea of the time of day, but Steve’s face is twisted in frustration.

**_“No. If we get past the group of men coming in here, and manage to incapacitate them in a way that means they can’t follow us, there’s another fight to be had out there. And we can’t control that one.”_ **

Steve’s heart is in the pit of his stomach. There are at least a dozen men beyond the door. Five he saw clustered around an oil-drum fire, another three on the opposite side of the open space near a vehicle—he only saw enough to know it looked old and slow, but he’ll take what they can get if there are keys. There was a building almost directly opposite, and there were a handful of men on the lanai and inside. One of them has to be Wo Fat and, if it was just him to consider, he would probably go after him. But he _has_ to get Danny out of here. Where the hell is the task force? Why weren’t they protecting Danny like they promised? Steve’s anger at the whole situation causes another—much needed—adrenaline surge. He needs a plan and he needs it fast.

Steve turns to Danny and indicates how many people he’s seen outside. When Danny does the count up in his head, he realises that the six-to-one ratio they face of trained killers versus Steve and some useless high school kid, he feels despair creeping in. He wants to slide down the wall and hide his face in his hands. He wants to go back into the room downstairs and lock himself in. He wants to go home, to his mom and dad and his sisters. But none of these wants eclipses his want for Steve and to help him save his life. Steve doesn’t deserve any of this, and he certainly doesn’t deserve to die in some nameless part of Oahu’s jungle. Pulling himself together, he tries to erase the despair and replace it with determination, and even though it’s weak and aimless, it’s the best he’s got.

**_“And we have three chair legs, a bum arm and our wits and charm. Fucking wonderful. When we get out there, what then?”_ **

Steve lifts the knife he now has, and silently shows Danny how to hold it, how to grip it, and gestures on his own body how to do this silently. When he first kissed Danno what seemed like a lifetime ago, he never imagined that he’d be silently teaching him how to sever a carotid artery without drawing attention. He certainly never imagined that Danny would pick it up so damn quickly, modelling the perfect action on Steve in that damp, dirty stairway. Yet, when he turns, he sees the tears in Danny’s eyes and his heart breaks. If they make it out of this, he wonders if Danny will ever forgive him for what he’s going to have to do to survive it.

Danny clutches the leather-wrapped handle of the short blade he took from the floor. He watches Steve’s movements, copies them, and understands what he can now do. At least, he has the knowledge to do it. Whether he has the guts remains to be seen. If his mom could see him now! She was worried that Steve was going to corrupt him, make him older than his years, use him in some way even. Danny can’t help the single, silent laugh that escapes when he considers where they would be now if he hadn’t kissed Steve. If he hadn’t fallen so completely in love with him that he is, quite literally, learning how to kill for him. It’s so messed up, and yet he feels that resolute calm come over him again. _Him or me._

**_“You follow my lead. We do what we can and we do it quickly. We stay low. Take weapons we can find, try to move quietly. But we stay together. Always.”_ **

Steve waits a little longer, watches the patterns of movement as best he can, but knows they can’t delay any longer. Someone is going to miss those guys who will soon be rotting in that hell hole behind them. One last check back on Danny: his face is serene, focused, and Steve knows that look. He’s seen it on the faces of the men he worked for, worked with, even on Matt’s face. They’re going to need that focus, and Steve finds he is both overwhelmingly proud of Danny’s ability to do this already, and relieved that he is finding a way to compartmentalise. Maybe they will make it through this.

But hope is a dangerous thing. Steve knows this and he smothers it quickly. He presses against the door which shifts easily and, thankfully, silently. He slides down a little, hunching over into the wall of the building as he slides out and around the wall, Danny tight behind him, until they make their way behind the shack that stood above their pit. Steve breathes a little. Their choices were limited before, but he had hoped with better knowledge of the site that there would be a way for them to get away without having to risk confrontation. But there isn’t.

The compound isn’t some sprawling thing, rather than a tight network of a handful of buildings with one road in and out through massive wooden gates. They aren’t the kicker though, rather the ten foot wall that seems to circle the entire property is. Alone, and without the damage to his shoulder, he might have been able to make it over somewhere. But with the pain and Danny, there’s no way.

Steve isn’t prone to panic, not in situations like this, because his training takes over and he knows what to do and how to live. But right now, after more than a year off the job, he is struggling to dig into the reserves he used to have when situations grew seemingly futile. He can’t give up, not when they have this hidden advantage. He looks back at Danny who is looking about them, maintaining focus on the situation, and Steve sucks back all his insecurities and doubts. Right now, this is about keeping them both alive long enough. There is a small copse of trees maybe twenty feet away. There is zero cover and they have no firepower, but they have guts. Danny’s fast on his feet and Steve’s a fucking combat veteran: they can do this.

**_“Always.”_ **

Steve points towards the trees and Danny nods. God! The way they can speak to each other without a single word. Steve is so very much in love with the amazing man behind him that he takes a second, just a brief second, to brush Danny’s hair back from his forehead and take Danny’s lips with his own. It’s risky—every second wasted might be second closer to death—but he can’t not kiss him one more time. If they die, he wants it to be with this memory fresh in their minds. Danny leans into the kiss and breathes softly against Steve’s skin.

At Steve’s insistence, they take off across the open space and slide into the cover of the trees. They make it, but Steve knows they can’t relax, because they still have no way out. He looks up and sees that there is maybe an hour of light left. If they can lay low for the hour, they might have a chance of taking the men down covertly. Steve feels Danny pulling on his arm and, while biting back the burn across his shoulder, he looks back at the building they have come from and sees what Danny is trying to show him.

Wo Fat.

Wo Fat and another two men heading straight for their prison.

Steve indicates the next building along and they run, breaths heaving in and out of exhausted, injured chests. Danny presses his hand to his side, where he knows there are definitely a couple of broken ribs now, and pumps his legs harder. Just like football, he finds himself thinking, just got to get that next down. They reach the building and Steve indicates for silence. They are going in and he is going first. Danny grips the blade more tightly, and exactly how Steve showed him. Steve stops and pushes Danny back against the door as a man steps out, cigarette already pressed between his lips. Steve grabs him, one arm wrapped around his neck and the other his forehead. With eyes bulging, the man grabs at Steve’s arms while his legs scramble for purchase. Steve just keeps dragging him backwards, until he is able to deposit the unconscious body behind the building. He nods at Danny who smiles grimly. Steve steps forward again. Danny places his hand on Steve’s shoulder—I’m here, it says—and Steve pulls the door open slowly.

Danny follows him in and immediately sees there’s just two more men in here. One launches himself at Steve, a slew of insults pouring from his mouth as he strikes out at Steve. The other looks at Danny and his smirk is, frankly, insulting. Danny might not be a professional, but he’s fights fucking dirty. The man lunges for him, and Danny turns into the strike, spinning the man and his ego backwards and away. Just as he’s about to stumble out of Danny’s range, he grabs the man’s shirt collar and hauls him back into his body. Danny raises the blade to the man’s ear and, just as the man lands a strike with his elbow into Danny’s gut, Danny presses the blade in deep. The gush of thick blood is hot against his arm, but the body of the man slumps forward. Danny is detached as he watches the man clutch at the open wound, before his eyes go blank while the puddle of red continues to spread. Danny has killed two people today.

Steve hoarsely whispers his name and he spins quickly. The other man is also in a puddle of blood and Steve is now carrying a small handgun. Danny imagines it won’t have many rounds in it, but he doesn’t know for certain, he just hurries back over and presses himself into the space behind Steve before they work to clear the rest of the little house. There are only three rooms, one of which is a bathroom and the other a bedroom. Or at least, there are four mattresses on the floor so Danny presumes to give it the title ‘bedroom’. There are cleanish clothes in a dresser, and Steve tosses Danny a shirt before stripping his own disgusting clothing from his body. He would love to shower but there simply isn’t time, and so he just pulls on cleaner clothing and feels less like he’s walking in a toilet.

There are shouts beyond the door, across the compound. There is so little time left. Steve hurries back into the main room of the house and searches the men again. In the back pocket of the man Danny took down is a cell phone. Steve feels his heart leap. He presses 911 and sends the number, waiting with his breath caught in his throat. Danny’s eyes are wide and Steve sees it again – hope dangerously trying to sneak in. A dispatcher answers and Steve rattles off a request to be transferred to the governor’s task force, stating his name.

Chin’s voice echoes through the phone, calling Steve’s name repeatedly. But Steve can’t answer. There is a gun pressed to Danny’s temple and the man himself is staring back at him, blue eyes void of everything except terror. Steve hangs up the call, settles his weapons to the floor, and places his own hands behind his head. He has to let that hope back in now. He has to hope that the call was enough. Has to hope that Chin gets what he needs to come and save them. Because Steve has failed to save them.

**_“And if we don’t make it, Steve?”_ **

**_“We will, I promise.”_ **

**_“But if we don’t, promise me we stay together then. Okay? Promise me, Steve. Because I’ve done being without you, and there’s no way I can do it again.”_ **

**_“Okay, Danno, I promise. Together. Always.”_ **

**_“Always.”_ **


	22. Saved

Steve takes a deep breath, and then looks straight into Danny’s eyes. Something changes as Steve looks on, and he realises it is Danny making a decision. There is just one guy, _one guy_ , so surely they can do this? Chin and the task force must be on their way—they just have to hold out a little longer. Steve glances down towards where Danny has his knife stashed and flicks his eyes back up. Danny’s gaze says everything.

“Just let him go,” Steve says quietly. “Wo Fat wants me, not him, so just let him go. Take me.”

The idiot with the gun, who’s maybe a foot taller than Danny, laughs mirthlessly and pushes the gun harder into Danny’s temple. Danny stumbles with the force of it, but he also takes the opportunity it gives him, managing to slip the knife out of his belt loop and into his hand. He holds the blade upright, pressed behind his wrist, before looking straight at Steve, his lips pressed into a grim line.

“Just let him go. I don’t want us to have to do this.”

Danny reads between the lines—Steve doesn’t want Danny to have to do this, to put a knife into someone’s flesh. Sure, he’s already killed at least one man today, but each one adds a toll to the soul you can’t really ever scrub clean. And this kind of death is close, personal: it's a heavier toll.

“We’re going to go find the boss. Come on, move,” the idiot grunts, shoving the gun again. Danny’s nod is so slight Steve knows the other guy won’t notice. Steve tenses his muscles, legs ready to throw him up and forwards.

It takes barely a breath. Danny releases the blade a little and drives it upwards. He feels hot blood spurt out onto his hand, his wrist, the back of his shirt, and then throws himself off to the side and out of reach of the now gasping man. Steve launches himself forward and topples the man whose head lands on the wooden floor with a sickening thud. Steve presses his forearm across his throat and Danny watches consciousness slip away and be replaced with blackness. He breathes deep, gasping breaths, frantically wiping the blood on his hands off on to his shirt. Steve stands again, checks Danny for injuries, but knows that the only thing hurting is his heart.

“You did good,” he says, dragging his trembling man into a brief but fierce hug. “You did good,” he repeats, “and you saved us, both of us.”

He hopes that pointing out the necessity of it will ease the shock.

“Now what?” Danny asks, eyes darting out through the window to the compound beyond. He can see men searching—it won’t be long before they realise the man he stabbed isn’t coming back. It won’t take much more for them to realise why.

“We keep moving,” Steve says. “We got that call out, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take before they can get people here because I don’t know where _here_ is. Let’s try to get to the perimeter, okay?”

They step out of the back door and onto the lanai as quietly as they can. The sun is setting quickly now, and there are long, dark shadows tracing the edges of the buildings and walls and trees. Danny is unsettled: he can’t make things out in the shadows and he feels like someone else is going to launch out at them with every step he takes. Steve leads them through the shadows and towards the property's main gate. He’s hoping that Wo Fat’s men won’t think he’s stupid enough to head for the front door. _Hope is a dangerous thing_ , he reminds himself again, but it’s all he has now. As they approach the large wooden gates that separate them from whatever safety and freedom might be beyond, Steve suddenly drops to his knees and presses himself to the wall. Danny follows suit, mirroring the movement almost exactly. Steve’s head tilts a little and then the most blinding smile follows. Danny is confused—what the hell does he have to smile about right now?—but then he hears it too. Trucks, a helicopter maybe, and sirens. Definitely sirens.

Steve’s shoulders relax.

Danny’s whole body sags.

An enormous truck with HPD SWAT emblazoned on the side ploughs through the gates. A sudden beam of light fills the air and then the compound along with the down-draft from a helicopter.

Danny wants to cry. They came. _Someone came for them._ Instead, he reaches for Steve. They aren’t out of the woods yet, because there are still people running and guns firing, but Danny needs some reassurance that this is almost over. He stumbles forward and tucks himself into Steve’s embrace, his eyes hidden in Steve’s shoulder. Steve collapses under the weight and slumps to the floor, Danny effectively curled up in his lap. And there they wait, while the chaos ebbs and flows around them, hidden in the shadows of the compound.

*

Three hours later, Danny and Steve face each other, sitting on adjacent beds in the ward at Tripler Medical Centre. They don’t speak, because really there’s nothing to say. They’ve had some basic first aid, but are still waiting to be seen by a doctor. The hospital staff had tried to separate the men, what with Danny being a 'minor' and all, but Steve refused and the team seemed to realise quickly that it was an argument they weren’t going to win.

Danny thinks he hears them first, but Steve looks up quickly as well. His parents are here. Danny hears his mom’s voice, thick with fear but also exhaustion. His father’s deeper voice behind, reminding her to be calm, and then asking where they can find them. Danny is suddenly afraid: afraid of what they will think about him now, afraid about how they’re going to look at him, afraid about how much they know about what he’s had to do. He stands abruptly and darts over to Steve, sitting next to him and pressing their arms together. He feels instantly calmer, and Steve presses back a little to reassure.

Clara bursts through the door into their room and takes in her boys. Steve’s arm is hanging funny, his skin streaked with blood and sweat and dirt. His eyes are the worst part though: fear, hurt, anger and, above all, exhaustion. A quick glance confirms that Danny looks almost as bad, dark circles colouring the skin beneath his eyes and bruises too numerous to count.

“Danny,” she gasps, before closing the space between them and wrapping him into an enormous hug. He winces when she presses in to the bruises that darken his chest, but he doesn’t let go, not right away. Slowly, the pain does become too much and he draws back, apology on his lips, but she just brushes the hair from his forehead. “Baby, I’m so glad you’re safe,” she says and smiles.

She turns to Steve then. He gets a hug too, lighter because it’s clear the pain is worse. She shudders at the feeling of him in her arms. Four days has thinned him more, worse after the flu which had already taken a few pounds from him, and she thinks she can count his ribs with her fingers.

“Thank you,” she whispers into his ear, “for getting him back for us.”

“He brought me back,” Steve replies, not keeping his voice low. “Without him I don’t think I would have—” His words are cut off by a broken sob which threatens to tear him apart. Instead, he presses his lips together and sucks in a breath. If he falls to pieces now, he might not be able to put himself back together again. It’s all too raw, too close. Danny presses into his shoulder again, and Steve wants to bury his face in Danny’s stomach and hide for a while.

“Boys,” Eddie nods, patting Danny’s head.

“Dad. I’m so sorry,” Danny says. He doesn’t know what else to say.

“What on earth do you have to be sorry for?”

“He doesn’t, but I do,” Steve interrupts again, his voice breaking. “If it wasn’t for me, Danny would never have been in danger.”

“Maybe,” Eddie concedes, “But you had no way to predict that these animals would behave like this, would do these things. You can’t help who you love.”

Steve’s eyes widen and it would be comical for Danny if he wasn’t so terrified himself. Clara flushes a little before glancing at both of them.

“I told him everything. I had to. When we realised you were gone, Danny, I had to find a way to let him know you’d be okay. Because you were together.”

“Dad,” Danny says gently.

“I don’t like it, so much, but I understand it. Okay? That’s the best I’ve got for now.”

The doctor arrives then with what seems like a small army of nurses, and the Williams parents are shuffled out with promises they can return later, once Chin and Kono have taken statements and their wounds are treated. Clara promises they aren’t going far. Danny and Steve barely survive the chaos of the following few hours, barely hanging on to their sanity.

It’s the early hours of the morning when silence finally settles. They’ve both showered, forced themselves to eat something, and are nicely dosed up on pain killers. Steve has surgery on his shoulder tomorrow, but for now he gets to rest, though he’s finding sleeping hard. Danny’s on a drip to replace fluids, and seems just as restless. Eventually, he slides out of bed and grabs the IV stand. He shuffles painfully over to Steve’s bed and just glares for a moment. Steve smiles softly, delighted to see some of _his_ Danny back. He shuffles over slowly, making some room in the small bed. Danny slides in next to him, curling his head over onto Steve’s chest but trying not to press his weight anywhere. Steve strokes his hair and shushes him as Danny quietly sobs into the darkness.

“It’s over now, babe,” Steve says, as he quietly stuffs his own anguish into one of the many overflowing mental compartments he has developed. He’ll deal with it later because right now he has to be what Danny needs. He knows it will go the other way one day.

“I killed people,” Danny says morosely. “It was them or me, I know that, but I didn’t ever imagine I would be in that position. It feels—” Danny doesn’t think he has the words to explain the churning emotions in his heart or his gut.

“I get it, I do. But Danno, those men wouldn’t have thought twice about taking your life, and you did what you had to save yourself, to save me. I didn’t think I could love you more than I did, but the last day has taught me differently. You reminded me of Matt, brave and calm despite everything. Thank you.” He presses a gentle kiss to Danny’s head and Danny looks up, his morose eyes still spilling tears. He reaches up, curves a palm around the bruises and cuts on Steve’s face, and draws their lips together. The kiss is long, soft, sweet and oh so much what they both needed.

Danny curls up again, his heart patched up a little, even if it's a long way from mended. Steve bites back his own tears because they are more about Danny’s pain than his own right now. Instead, he slides his arm around Danny and holds him tight, pressing them together to reassure each that they are still there. Then he finally lets the pain medications take over and slips into a soundless, dreamless sleep.

Danny struggles awake a few hours later. There’s a nurse taking some readings and she smiles at him softly.

“You know, you have a perfectly good bed of your own.” The admonishment is light, jovial, but Danny still feels Steve’s arm tighten around him.

“He’s staying here,” comes the hoarse response and Danny smiles, his heart buoyed by the possessive tone.

“I guess I’m staying here,” he says with a smile and the nurse laughs gently before leaving. “Didn’t know you were awake,” he continues, turning his face up to look at Steve. What he sees takes his breath. Steve’s eyes are black, broken in some way, but also brimming with adoration and love: the force of it is overwhelming and Danny presses kisses to Steve’s lips and the bruising along his jaw. Danny marvels at the way lust, which they simply cannot manage right now with their injuries and fatigue, has morphed into intense tender adoration. As their tongues meet, a soft moan slips from his mouth and he runs his fingers through the hair at Steve’s nape. When they pull away, the strength of it has taken both their breaths, and they settle against each other to recover. Danny feels Steve’s fingers tracing circles down his spine as exhaustion takes him back to sleep once more.

“Steve?” The voice is gentle, male, and very close. “Steve?” it comes again. Steve’s eyes flicker open slowly and he glances up straight in to the warm, brown eyes of Chin Ho Kelly. His arm tightens reflexively around Danny, who is still asleep and breathing deeply, warm air stroking across his chest.

“Chin?”

“Hey, man. How’re you doing?”

“Sore,” Steve huffs.

“Look, I tried to put him off, but Governor Denning is on his way. He wants to talk with you about something pressing.”

“Now?” Steve asks incredulously. He glances down at Danny’s sleeping body and feels abject misery at the thought of waking him. He has surgery in a couple of hours and that is going to be difficult enough.

“I’m sorry,” Chin says with a shrug. Steve reaches to wake Danny, to move him back to his own bed. It’s not that he’s concerned about what the Governor will think, rather that he wants to protect Danny from worrying about it instead. “Don’t move him,” Chin says, pressing a hand to Steve’s good shoulder gently. “The Governor knows everything,” he adds pointedly. Steve wants to be embarrassed or ashamed, or at least thinks he should be, but he simply isn’t so he doesn’t give it much more thought.

It’s only a few moments later when the governor steps into the hospital room. He’s a tall man, fairly broad, and he seems to fill the space more than he should. Steve looks up at the man’s grim face and nods.

“Governor Denning,” he says.

“Steve. It’s good to see you again. I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“What's your recovery going to look like?” Denning seems genuinely concerned and Steve appreciates it more than he thought he would.

“Surgery. PT. It’s going to be a while before I can toss a football again.” The corners of his lips flick up into a soft smile, before they fall again and he glances down at Danny’s sleeping form. However, as he looks, he realises that Danny is clearly waking up, even if he doesn’t want to.

“I’m more worried about Danny right now,” Steve continues. “This was worse for him.” Steve feels a little tension pass through Danny, though he remains stoically 'asleep'.

“Indeed,” says Denning, glancing at Danny himself. Steve appreciates that Denning doesn’t seem offended or concerned about Danny or how he sleeps curled against Steve’s chest.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you, both of you, but I wanted to see you myself as soon as possible and to thank you for everything you’ve done.”

“We didn’t get Hesse though, Sir, just Wo Fat and his men.”

“That’s a start, and it brings us closer. Right now, I want you to rest and get well again.”

“And after that?” Steve probes, because his health is clearly not the only reason that the Governor has called in.

“I want you to come work for me, Steve.”

Steve shudders. He left the military for a reason—he doesn’t want to do this anymore.

“I’m not sure I can be what you need,” he says quietly, fear overwhelming the need to please and serve. “I’m not field ready, at all.”

“I don’t want you in the field, not yet anyway. Your years of military intelligence and experience, few as they are, mean you can bring something to the task force that we need. Work at HQ, Steve, help them build the cases, the intel they need. Then, if you’re ready, you can start field work. But only if you’re ready.”

“Can I think about it?” he asks. He thought he wanted to teach, but after the disaster of the last few days he thinks that maybe working with Chin and the team would be a way to help without . . . without losing himself, is what he comes up with.

“Of course. Of course. Look, when you’re out of here, when you’ve been home a while, you let me know. Okay?”

Steve nods and, after shaking hands with Chin, Denning leaves almost as quickly as he arrived. Chin pulls up a chair, and Danny blinks awake, rubbing his eyes (somewhat dramatically, Steve thinks with a fond smile).

“You know, he’s right,” Chin says. Steve looks over at him. He remembers Chin from school, from the football field, and from the few conversations he’d managed to have with his dad before their contact seemed to end altogether. Chin worked with his dad, but doesn’t seem to have suffered for it in the end.

“How is he right?” Steve asks warily.

“We could use your skills. Kono does her best, and Lori is pretty good, but no-one has any military connections or understanding. And in a place like Hawai’i, that would be pretty useful. We need someone with a more global set of experiences, and we enjoyed working with you before you went all ninja on us and disappeared.” Chin grins.

Steve nods thoughtfully and then glances at Danny when he feels his gaze.

Danny smiles at Steve, and glances at Chin briefly, before turning back. “Well, you wouldn’t be my history teacher anymore, but maybe you can still help me with my homework?” 

“You know, that’s not really a problem anyway. At least, not as far as we’re concerned.”

“Pretty sure Lou Grover wouldn’t feel the same way,” Steve scoffs.

“Pretty sure about what, Steve?” comes the man’s voice itself. Lou steps into their room, barely sparing a glance at Danny whose face has grown suddenly and painfully hot, stinging at the bruises. Steve thinks he hears and exhaled _shit_ against his chest as Danny turns his face away. “Now, I heard a story about a history teacher and one of his football players getting lost out in the woods, tortured by some crazy maniac, and managing to get themselves back in one piece without any real help. And I also heard that maybe this teacher was a little bit more of a big shot during his military career than he had let on during his interview, which maybe means he should be doing something bigger and better with his time. And one other thing,” he continues, raising a finger to silence the objection Steve was starting to form. “I also heard from a certain Grace Tilwell that maybe, just maybe, the teacher and the football player had a little more going on in their personal lives than they should have. But, a trauma like that, being tortured in the way that I have heard, would draw even the strongest, most morally sound people together if that’s how they were feeling about things."

Steve can’t help but smile at Lou’s broad face, the man himself grinning back. He strides over and shakes Steve’s hand, Steve still grinning at his mentor and his friend.

“I’m glad you’re still with us, man,” Lou says all gentle and soft, in a way Danny has never heard before. “And you, Williams, are maybe one of the strongest kids I’ve ever met. Well, maybe not a kid, you know . . .” and Lou waves off the perceived faux pas and focuses back on Steve.

“I’m proud of you, okay. And dinner, when you’re out of here. Renee is pretty insistent she gets to see you soon, and that you bring your new man with you. Which will be weird, but I’m working on it!”

Danny feels like dying. Steve has been in the O.R. for almost an hour and the separation is tearing Danny apart. He is self-aware enough to recognise how unhealthy this is but it doesn’t change the way he feels. He’s nauseous. His heart palpates. His pulse races. His hearing is fuzzy. He recognises the panic attack for what it is, but every tried and true method of fighting it fails him. Instead, he allows it to take over, for the emotions to wring through him, and it swallows him whole.

The oblivion is kind of nice. He can’t feel the pain of his injuries, just the desperation of hardly breathing. He’s aware he’s crying, that there are gut-wrenching sobs tearing themselves from within him, but it’s a strange kind of feeling: he seems utterly disconnected from himself.

“Danny?” he hears. “Danny? You okay? What can I do?”

It’s Kono. He didn’t expect her here. He’s not sure why as other members of the task force have all been in to see Steve – though he realises belatedly that they’ve been to see him too. Kono stops trying to talk to him and instead wraps him in an embrace, breathing with him until he finds he is back within himself again. He’s even more exhausted than before, which is definitely not something he thought possible.

“Better?” Kono asks gently. God, he really likes this woman.

“Yes, thanks.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

Danny thinks about his answer, because he had stopped having them until recently. It’s always Steve—or rather his absence—which causes the issue.

“I missed him,” he finally decides on with a shrug. Kono nods, her all-encompassing gaze wise way beyond her (apparent) years.

“I came to check on you,” she says, smiling. “I didn’t realise Steve wouldn’t be here.”

“Surgery. On his shoulder. Wo Fat messed it up pretty bad.” They sit in companionable silence for a while until Danny’s eyes start to droop. He’s still on a drip, and he’s pretty sure he’s being pumped with other drugs too.

“Sleep. I’ll wait with you, okay?”

Danny is overwhelmingly grateful for that as he slumps down on his bed and closes his eyes again.

The next night is rough. Steve’s is out of it, the drugs they’re giving him post-surgery are really strong and Danny can’t sleep with him like last night either. It hurts and, while Steve had tried, Danny could tell it was too painful. Instead, he’s breaking his own neck curling up in a chair next to Steve’s bed and holding his hand.

Tomorrow, he is meant to go home but Steve will stay for another few days.

Danny isn’t sure he’s going to be able to leave him.


	23. Eight Years Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny and Steve get their happily ever after. Because they deserve it.

“Hey, babe? You home?” Danny strides into the house and tosses his keys into the basket on the end table before striding into the kitchen. The back door is open, the yard stretching out down to the small patch of beach they now call ‘their own’ (even if the State still very much owns it). Eddie comes bounding towards him from where he’d been watching Steve swim deep out in the ocean, beyond the shelf of sand that stretches out about twenty feet before dropping off.

Danny toes off his loafers and steps onto the sand and wanders towards where the soft ripples of the ocean stroke the shoreline. He watches Steve as he slices through the water—the ocean is gentle today which Danny knows Steve will complain about. _Not enough resistance, Danno,_ he’ll say. And Danny will laugh and call him insane. And it will break the tension of whatever has sent Steve out into the water this evening, because Steve swims in the morning for his health, and the evening for his sanity.

Danny settles into a chair and watches. He loves quiet moments like these, when he gets to take stock of his life. He’s twenty-five, and it shouldn’t take that long, but everything since Steve came back into his life has been chaos and speed and insanity. It’s what makes it so exciting, but also gruelling sometimes. His favourite memories are of the first few days when they had gotten out of the hospital after _the incident_ with Wo Fat. In the end, Chin had spoken to the staff and Danny stayed as long as Steve did. His dad’s face when he said he wasn’t coming home yet was both priceless and terrifying, but Danny couldn’t leave Steve, not then and it would seem not ever. Instead, he argued that Steve would struggle to look after himself with his bad shoulder (Ma had tried to say Mary could do it, but Mary then burst through the door with a wailing Joanie and spilled the diaper bag contents all over the floor, very much helping Danny’s case thank you very much!).

And so Danny likes to remember the few days he lived with Steve before he had to go home. It wasn’t fun: they both hurt, they both suffered, but they got to do it together when it had seemed like one or both of them might not make it. They had held each other, cried with each other, and slept like babies in between.

Steve begins the slow crawl back to shore, and Danny’s stomach tightens when he grows close enough to see clearly. As Steve rises like some form of god from the ocean, the water rolling over his bronzed skin, Danny finds his gaze torn away from delightful pectorals and pert nipples to a brand new, rather large and purple bruise, forming on the left of his rib cage.

“Bad day at the office, dear?” Danny asks, his worry hidden behind a wry smirk. Steve leans over him, presses a hot (and slightly desperate) kiss to Danny’s parted mouth before shaking his hair out a little and making Danny grimace instead.

“Like you don’t know,” Steve smiles and kisses him once more before grabbing a towel to rub himself off. “You get the paperwork done?” he asks.

“Did I . . . yes, Steven, I got the paperwork done. You, apparently, have forgotten that it is a part of your job description to also do paperwork, but yes. Mine is done.”

“You type better,” Steve shrugs, settling into the familiar, safe bickering he craves. Danny isn’t going to give today, though, and he presses instead.

“You don’t have to do these things if you don’t want,” he says softly, twining his fingers with Steve’s.

“I know,” Steve replies. “Today was a good day, really. I hate fist fights, but the guy was a bad, bad guy, and it’s okay that he’s dead.”

And that, right there, is the sum of a lot of (thankfully free) military-grade therapy. Because five years ago, just a handful of weeks after Steve had returned to the field, he was left almost catatonic after shooting a perp on Sand Island. Danny had wept for Steve that day: it felt as though a piece of him died that they were never going to get back. They did, but it had taken a hell of a lot of work.

“Yes, I agree, a very bad man.” ( _Child trafficker, prostitution ring owner and generally evil scum kind of bad_ , Danny amends mentally.) “But that doesn’t mean you’re okay.”

“A few bruises, but that is really all it is. I’m okay.” They hear Eddie barking at them from the lanai and then skittering back into the house.

“That’ll be Grace,” Danny says with a huge grin, and he sees that Steve’s matching grin is almost as huge. “Come on, put on a shirt and let’s go feed our girls.”

They sit for several hours around the table on the lanai. Danny watches Steve light up as he talks about their cases, about how proud he is of Danny since he left HPD and joined Five-O. It had been a short, mandated time for Danny at HPD—under Chin’s explicit instruction—but they pulled him out as a UC at Hawaii University and he never seemed to go back. Now, he spends most of his days riding with Kono and trying not to pick up too many bad habits.

“So have you finally managed to get the Governor to sign off on your leave?” Grace asks, eyes darting between Steve and Danny. A huge point of contention, the new Governor hadn’t wanted “a third of my goddamn task force swanning around with a stroller for six weeks” but they had been wearing her down.

“Nearly,” Danny smiles. “As a junior officer, I’m looking at four weeks max, but she’s granted Steve the full six.”

“That’s good,” Grace smiles, “A relief really. I’m not taking her back!”

Another of Danny’s favourite memories floods in and, while Grace and Steve discuss strollers and car seats and sleeping techniques, Danny’s allows the memory to play itself out.

*

“What are you thinking about?”

“Us,” Steve says simply, with a slight shrug that jostles Danny’s head from where it rests on Steve’s shoulder.

“Yeah, what about us? About how we’re roguishly charming, dashing, hunky?”

“Missing something,” Steve interrupts, though his tone is soft.

“What could we possibly be missing?” Danny asks, turning to look Steve in the eye. “We have the huge house we never thought we’d have, even if we got it in the worst possible way, and the puppy, and jobs that threaten to kill us on a daily basis. What more do we need?” Danny is only half joking. Steve’s dad’s sudden passing last year (from a heart attack that saved them both a lot of pain) had found them with a home of their own, rent and mortgage free. Mary-Ann had refused anything to do with it, telling Steve it should be his. The puppy was a gift, also from Mary-Ann, who pointed out that the boys needed practice taking care of something so they could finally take care of each other. Danny’s nephew, Eric, said the pup looked like a slightly less grumpy version of Danny’s father, so they’d named the dog Eddie as a joke that never got old.

Danny can’t really see what else they need.

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve says softly, stroking his fingers through the hair behind Danny’s ear. “You’re right. We have everything we need, except the nearly getting killed thing. I think we could both live without that.”

“Maybe,” Danny says, “but it keeps things interesting.” He draws a deep breath. Does he push, or wait? Steve is still restless though, so he decides that pushing is the way to go.

“You know, you can tell me anything. I’ll always listen. Because I love you, babe. You know that.”

“I just—” Steve blows out a frustrated breath. “I don’t want you to think that this isn’t enough, because it is. But, I guess that as I’ve gotten older I’ve realised that I want kids. Or wanted kids. Or, oh I don’t know, I guess I want to be a dad.”

Danny feels his breath catch a little in his throat and he looks up again, straight into Steve’s sad smile. “But it’s okay,” Steve adds, “because I know it’s not something we ever really talked about. I get that you probably don’t feel the same way.”

“Because I’m younger than you? Or because the idea of having a mini-you tearing through the house is mildly terrifying?” Danny asks, grinning.

“Both, actually. When I was your age, the last thing I wanted was kids.”

“When you were my age, you were running all over the world undertaking covert ops with my brother,” Danny says. “I get to be here, with you, and undertake very much overt ops. Seriously, that explosion yesterday was pretty cool.”

“The State of Hawai’I did _not_ think the explosion was cool,” Steve says wryly, remembering the reaming that Chin got from the Governor—again. “But my point stands. I would like us to think about having a child, or maybe children, if we can work out how.”

“Okay,” Danny says simply. It’s the easiest thing in the world for him. He has handed his entire heart and every ounce of love he was within him to this man—to Steve—and if he wants to share that out between a child or two, who is Danny to argue.

“Really? You don’t think you should take some time?” Steve asks.

“Just how long have you been thinking about this, McGarrett?” Danny asks with a swat to Steve’s arm.

“About a year,” he admits.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about my life with you for over a decade, even before I thought there was the slightest possibility it would ever happen, and believe me when I say that I thought about us as a family for a long time. I love you. It’s simple.”

*

“Danno?” Steve asks, rubbing his palm up Danny’s arm. “You okay?”

“Sorry, yes,” Danny grins, trying to reassure the two sets of worried eyes watching him.

“Where’d you go?” Grace asks. She rests a hand on the squirming baby still safely ensconced in her womb—their baby, Danny reminds himself—and cocks her head. Ready to listen. Always ready to listen.

“I was just remembering, it’s nothing. But did I ever tell you how grateful we are that you’re doing this for us? Just how much it means?” Danny asks.

“Every damn time I see you,” Grace laughs, “either of you,” she amends, looking at them both. “You deserve a family. I just get to be the gift box.”

It’s not much longer before Grace heads home. “These swollen ankles won’t rest themselves,” she says, hugging each of the men in turn. “Not long, boys. Get your beauty sleep. There’s not likely to be much of it once this little one arrives.” She grimaces at another particularly unpleasant kick to the ribs and then laughs. They hug her again, walking her out to the car. Just before she climbs in, she glances behind them to where Steve’s Camaro is parked (abandoned, really, Steve doesn’t park.)

“Time to get that family car sorted, Steve. That’s going to be no good for a car seat.”

“We’ll just use Danno’s car,” Steve says.

“Will we? Will we really, Steven? Because I am pretty sure that, in your words, you drive your car and I’ll drive mine. If you think you’re driving my car just because our child is inside, you are very much mistaken.”

“But I’m clearly the better driver,” Steve reasons, grinning as Danny quickly gets himself all riled up.

“The better??” Danny splutters. “Remind me, how many times has the Camaro ended up in the body shop?”

“Thirty-six,” Steve says, and his grin is devastatingly smug.

“And how many times has my car had to be repaired?”

“Once?” Steve hedges.

“And that was because?”

“I drove into it with the Camaro?” Steve adds again.

“Exactly. You will not, repeat, NOT, drive my car. Especially with our child inside.”

Grace laughs at them as they bicker, and drives away as they continue to discuss the dangers of their job, and how Danny’s car would be more damaged if he had to drive it to shoot outs. Eventually, they realise they are alone and the argument quickly runs out of steam.

“What about Alice?” Steve calls from the bed. He’s propped up on his pillow, thumbing through the baby name book again.

“What does it mean?” Danny manages around his toothbrush.

“Noble,” Steve shouts back.

“Hmm. Noble? I’m not sure,” Danny says, climbing in under the covers. He presses himself along Steve’s side, hoping to distract him before they end up arguing about this again. After finally managing to agree on a colour for the nursery (lavender) and the order of their surnames (McGarrett-Williams, it just flows better Steve), the baby’s name is the last thing to come. But it’s not coming easy.

“There’s Lucy,” Steve says.

“Isn’t that the name of the little Aloha girl you got stuck in the jungle with a few months back?” Steve nods. “Maybe not, then. Don’t want to tempt fate,” Danny says, somewhat nonsensically as far as Steve is concerned. But Danny is starting to do that thing with his tongue around Steve’s nipple that they both like so very, very much. Steve puts the book down, flips off the lamp and flips himself over Danny.

“Freaky ninja,” Danny mutters, before finding his mouth full of Steve’s tongue and his own moans.

Steve rolls his hips and presses his already hardening cock into Danny’s hip. Their mouths meet in soft, warm kisses that tease rather than torture, and Steve languishes in the quiet moments where Danny says _I love you_ with his body. Steve wants his life to be filled with moments like these forever, with the man he loves pressing into him and the silence of the world embracing him. He’s going to work damned hard to keep them both safe, even if Hesse is still out there somewhere.

Shoving that last thought out of his mind, Steve rolls his hips once more, and the licks across Danny’s jawline and sucks an ear lobe between his teeth. Danny shivers, just the way Steve likes, and he repeats the action just to feel the shiver once more.

“What do you want?” Steve whispers into Danny’s ear, the hot breath causing a third shiver to ripple through him. “Tell me what you want, Danno.”

“Fuck,” Danny breathes, and Steve smothers a laugh because, yes, that is his point. “Want you in me,” Danny says and Steve grins once again. He loves Danny balls deep in him, of course, but he loves taking Danny apart almost as much.

“Okay,” he whispers, before stretching out for the bedside table and grabbing lube.

Danny lifts one leg, pressing his foot into the mattress, as Steve settles between his legs. Steve is feeling a little impatient, though, and he presses Danny’s other leg up as well, exposing Danny completely. He lubes up a finger and then rubs around the furled pucker of Danny’s ass before sucking the head of Danny’s cock into his mouth. And then, because he’s a bastard, he kind of just stops. Slow circles, gentles laving of the cock-head, but almost nothing else. Danny feels the tension in him grow slowly, over and over, until he can barely think just from the lightest of sensations.

“Steve,” he groans, “please. More, please.” He doesn’t want to beg, yet he can’t help it. He feels Steve’s grin around the dick in his mouth, and finally lets out a shuddering grin as Steve pushes his finger in slowly and deep-throats his dick at the same time. The dual change, the sensation, drives Danny hurtling towards the edge, where he dangles precariously.

Steve continues to open Danny, one finger becomes two, and he scissors him open more while drawing back from the root of Danny’s cock and using his free hand to stroke him, all gentle touches and kitten licks again. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and enjoys watching Danny’s face change from relaxed, to desperate, to blissed out. A heavy flush colours the skin beneath Danny’s hairy chest, something Steve has grown to love almost as much as Danny’s mouth, as Danny’s grown from boy to man.

“I’m so ready, babe, come on,” Danny groans, clenching the muscles in his ass to draw Steve’s fingers deeper.

“Okay, okay,” Steve mutters, pressing hot kisses and wet bites to the inside of Danny’s thigh and running his tongue along the crease of his hip. “I’ve got you.”

Steve lubes up his own straining cock, takes a moment to regain control of himself, and then begins to press in slowly. Danny loves this part, the small movements as he feels his body open to welcome Steve. He’s told Steve, knows they are both aware of Danny’s need to take this moment and feel it, to enjoy it, to revel in feeling like they are joining completely. He’s a sap, so sue him, he’s also a horny sap so he gets to enjoy this a lot.

Steve bottoms out and then hunches over, kissing Danny deeply and completely, tangling their limbs together as much as he possibly can and just breathing in the heat of the man below him. They spend long moments just _feeling_ , just being connected, until Danny’s need grows again and he’s suddenly urging Steve on.

Steve raises himself from Danny’s body and looks deeply into Danny’ lust blown eyes, feels the heat envelop him in a way that says _safe_ and _loved_ and _mine_ before he finally thrusts his hips a little. The smallest of withdrawals, before thrusting back in a little deeper than before. Resting on one hand by Danny’s head, the other hand digging finger marks into Danny’s hips, Steve gives himself over to feeling and nothing more.

Danny is writhing, his own hand pumping his cock while Steve slowly loses his mind above him. Danny loves this too, watching Steve’s worries and fears be eclipsed by sensation as he slowly falls apart. He feels completely surrounded: Steve’s hot breath on his face, the heat from his body radiating down, the heat of his thick cock as it plunges in and out of his ass. He knows why Steve loves this so much, why he wanted it this way the first time they made love, and why he rarely takes this for himself. But when he does, it reminds him why he loves Steve so much.

“Close, Danny, so close,” Steve groans, his pace accelerating as his thrusts become more erratic and unpredictable. Every few strokes he grazes Danny’s prostate and soon—both too soon and not soon enough—they both find themselves cresting their wave. Steve buries himself deeply and thrusts minutely as he fills Danny, while Danny’s own orgasm is almost painfully intense.

They lay rolled together, Steve’s dick still inside Danny, though not for much longer. Danny’s come is sticky between them, their sweat almost as bad. Steve leans forward and buries his face in Danny’s neck, breathing in their combined scents and revelling in the feeling of _just mine_.

“You okay, babe?” Danny asks, carding his fingers through Steve’s hair and training down his spine, over and over.

“More than okay,” Steve says, pressing a kiss into Danny’s neck. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Will you love me less, when the baby comes?” Steve asks, and Danny swallows back a biting retort about ridiculousness and stupidity, because he knows that Steve’s faced too many losses, the biggest being his own family in many ways, and he needs a different answer.

“No,” Danny says definitively. “I don’t know how to love you any way different than I do now. But I’m going to love our little girl completely as well. Ma says you just find more love, so I guess that’s what we’ll do too.”

“What if I can’t love her?” Steve whispers, his face totally hidden away now, as he whispers his greatest fears into the warm flesh of the only person he can trust to tell them to.

“You already do,” Danny replies. “That feeling you get, when you imagine holding her, that’s love. I’ve seen it when you get all wistful and thoughtful. You already love her. You don’t need to worry about it. I promise.”

“I love you more though,” Steve continues. This time, the words are almost silent.

“I think you’re meant to. Because how can we be good parents if we don’t love each other above all else?”

And Danny knows that Steve is thinking about his own parents, about how they argued and hated and distanced, and how Steve never felt settled in his skin at home. Danny knows this, because he’s thinking about his own parents, and how the way they loved each other seeped into the fabric of their family and their home, and how that love was what held them together after Matty died.

“I know what we’re gonna call her,” Steve says, drawing back a little from the embrace and looking into Danny’s eyes.

“Oh yeah?” Danny asks. Steve hums before kissing Danny, and their words get lost as they explore each other once more, taking everything the other can give and sharing it back until all sense of time is lost. Danny’s thoughts are incoherent and scattered, full of Steve and the way they’re making each other feel, but not so much that he can’t repeat all the ways he loves Steve so that his words fill the air in the same way that their actions feel each others’ bodies and hearts.

“Where is my baby?” Clara demands joyfully from the doorway of the hospital room.

“I’m right here!” Danny declares, opening his arms wide. Clara shoves past him and they laugh as she swoops down to where Steve is cradling their daughter in his arms. A shock of dark hair peeks out from beneath the white hospital cap, a small hand of tiny fingers is wrapped around Steve’s thumb, and Clara pointedly doesn’t notice how Steve’s eyes are red-rimmed from tears.

“There she is!” she gasps. She wants to take the baby, to cradle in her arms, and to remember how she did that with her own babies. But she’s not going to do that to Steve, who is holding the infant like she’s holding him together. And Clara thinks that maybe, after everything Steve (and Danny) have been through up to this point, that maybe she is holding him together. And that’s okay.

“How are you doing?” Clara asks, turning to where Grace is resting in the bed behind them. The young woman looks tired, but Clara sees none of the remorse she had feared Grace might feel when it came time to hand the baby over.

“I’m so good, Clara,” Grace says quietly. “Look how happy they are.” Clara turns and sees how Danny rests his arm on Steve, both gazing adoringly at the baby resting between them. They are lost to her, not even really aware of the others in the room.

“They are happy. Are you?” Clara knows she couldn’t have done for someone else what Grace has done for Danny and Steve. That baby is as much hers as it is theirs, biologically, and Clara has been terrified that today would come and Grace wouldn’t be able to hand her back.

“I am so perfect! Glad everything’s over. I am never, ever doing this again.”

At that, Danny’s eyes snap up and Grace’s face dissolves into a smile. “Okay, maybe for you guys, I could go once more. But remember, once they’re out I have zero duties beyond hugs.” Danny’s eyes crinkle into a delighted smile and Clara pats Grace’s hand softly. This young woman is stronger and braver than she will ever be. And she loves Clara's boys almost as much as Clara does. She'll do great.

“So, do we have a name finally?” Clara asks. Steve glances up and into Danny’s grinning face before they both nod.

“Ma,” Danny says, beckoning her over. He lifts the baby from Steve’s arms, rolling his eyes at Steve’s appalled gasp. “You get her back in a minute,” Danny chides.

“Ma,” he says again, handing the baby over. “Meet Grace Matilda McGarrett-Williams.”

Clara bursts into tears.

Steve isn’t far behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those who were able to stay on this journey with me. I know that some of the events of the story weren't 'as advertised' and I'm sorry that the muse wandered so far from her path!
> 
> I wanted the boys to get their happy ever after, to get the future they deserved, and I hope you find some satisfaction in this ending. There are spaces, holes you'll be able to fill yourself in a way that gives you the ending you want (I hope). 
> 
> Thank you for all the comments, kudos and sharing. I feel the love and, in this awful year, I needed it. Thank you for sharing your time with me.


End file.
